Also by George Ortega
Climate Rescue Capitalism
Free Will: Its Refutation, Societal Cost
and Role in Climate Change Denial
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will, Second Edition
FREE WILL - MOVING
BEYOND THE ILLUSION
SCREEENPLAY FOR A DOCUMENTARY
GEORGE ORTEGA
A Happier World
White Plains, New York
Copyright © 2018 by George Ortega.
All rights reserved.
Published in
The United States of America in 2018
for A Happier World, White Plains, New York
by CreateSpace
Cover photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash
Cover design by George Ortega
1098765432
Free Will and Determinism
George Ortega 1957
ISBN-13: 978-1721914999
ISBN-10:1721914994
Dedication
For my maternal grandmother, Augusta
(Freemen) Mendez, (Daughter of Isaac and
Esther Friedman) and aunt, Elaine Mendez, and
my parents, Guillermo and Jeane, may they rest
in peace, who by bringing me up to love
everyone - meaning everyone - led me to, at an
early age, understand the causal nature of
human will.
Acknowledgement
Special thanks to James B. Miles, author of The
Free Will Delusion: How We Settled for the Illusion
of Morality, without whose support over the
course of many months this screenplay would
not have been written.
FREE WILL
MOVING BEYOND
THE ILLUSION
SCEENPLAY FOR A DOCUMENTARY
Table of Contents
The Pitch 1
Potential Producer-Financers 11
Contact Information 12
The Film Proposal 13
Logline 13
Topic Summary 13
Tone of the Film 14
Project Description 14
The Timing is Right 15
Audience Appeal 16
Financer/Producer's Investment and Benefits 16
Financer/Producer's Control 16
Synopsis 17
My Experience with the Topic 20
The Concept-Narration Screenplay 21
Introductory Vignettes: Human Will
Belief in Our Lives 22
xii
Survey of Past Revolutions in Human Thinking 23
"A Bigger Revolution in Our Thinking
than Einstein..26
Modern Thinkers Echo and Expand on
the Searle Quote 27
Inviting a Partnership with the Audience 27
Defining Free Will; History, Moral Implications and
Academic Definitions 28
Establishing Authority in Refuting Free Will 30
The Personal Destructiveness of Free Will
Belief: Two Cases 32
Inviting Audiences to, through Personal Experience,
Refute Free Will 33
Inviting Audiences' Personal Moral Experience
to Refute Free Will 35
Establishing Society's Idiomatic Rejection of Free Will 37
Calming Audiences' Fears about Abandoning
Free Will Belief 39
How Universal Causality Refutes Free Will 40
How Universal Acausality Refutes Free Will 45
How Nature and Nurture Refute Free Will 47
How Our Biological and Psychological Drives
Refute Free Will 50
How Our Unconscious Mind Refutes Free Will 53
How Psychology Experiments Challenge Free Will 55
How Tibet and Replications Refute Free Will 58
How Our Religions Refute Free Will 60
Review of the Free Will Refutations 66
Accepting that Our Will is Not Free 68
Pre- and Post-Free Will Belief Vignettes 70
Blame 71
Guilt 74
Arrogance 77
Low Self Esteem 80
Free Will Defenders' Positions, and the
Film's Responses 83
What Free Will Defenders Fear 85
Why Fears about Overcoming Free Will
Belief are Unfounded 88
The Social and Economic Impact of Our
Belief in Free Will 90
Religion 91
Criminal Justice 93
Poverty and Terrorism 94
Mass Media 96
Education 96
Depression and Anxiety 97
Divorce 98
LGBT 98
Review of Major Themes 99
The Benefits of a Post-Free Will World 101
Finale 105
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
1
The Pitch
This book is about prochicing a film that will lead to a much
happier world. It's also about leading the biggest scientific
revolution in human thinking our world has ever known, a
revolution that will be remembered for hundreds - indeed
thousands - of years.
If you're a hectomillionaire or billionaire with the as yet
unfulfilled ambition to make your mark on human history in a
way that does everyone a world of good, and ensures that
you'll be remembered and honored hundreds of years from
now, this book is for you. If you already understand that free
will is an illusion, know such a person, and would like to earn
what should amount to several hundred thousand dollars by
successfully pitching them the film, this book is also for you. If
you don't yet know this very rich person but are especially
persuasive, and would like to earn that commission by finding
and successfully pitching them the film, this book is also for
you. Finally, if you're a documentary film producer or
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director who knows how to get a $5 million-budgeted,
theatrical-release, feature film financed, this book is also for
you. Now that you know who you are, at least from my
perspective, here's the pitch.
Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein are
arguably our modem world's top scientific minds, at least as
ranked by their influence on human thought. The only other
scientist I would suggest belongs in this same elite class is
Isaac Newton, who through his discoveries and innovation
virtually single-handedly invented modern physics. What
Darwin, Freud and Einstein, however, have in common,
arrived at from the distinctly different scientific disciplines of
biology, psychology and physics respectively, is that they each
soundly rejected the notion that we human beings have a free
will.
Actually, his classical physics being fundamentally grounded
in a law of cause and effect that categorically prohibits free
will, and having written "For we adore him as his servants;
and a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is
nothing else but Fate and Nature." - Fate being free will's
negation - Newton apparently also rejected the notion. But
let's for now set aside both Newton and the common
misapprehension that may have just come to the mind of
some readers, suggesting that quantum mechanics is not
fundamentally as completely governed by this causal law as is
Newton's classical mechanics.
Although no one has yet proposed a convincing, let alone
cogent, mechanism by which a human being can ever decide
or do anything in a way that circumvents the influence -
indeed, the compulsion - of governing factors like the
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
3
physical laws of the universe and our combined genetic and
environmental programming, one argument put forth to
explain how a free will is supposed to work is the notion that
our decisions are probabilistic.
How that claim, quite similar in formulation to the suggestion
that human decisions occur randomly, offers any coherent
rational defence of free will is yet to be explained. But if we
invoke probabilities in the more conventional sense connoting
likelihood, free will believers are confronted with the
following problem. How probable, or likely, is it that our three
top scientific minds, using evidence and arguments derived
from three distinct scientific disciplines, were wrong in
considering free will an illusion, and that modern
philosophers and scientists of nowhere near their stature and
manifest intelligence who disagree with them are right?
But this documentary goes far beyond invoking the highest
scientific authority and strong likelihood in explaining to the
world exactly why free will does not exist. A major advantage
the free will question enjoys over other scientific questions
like whether or not our climate crisis is predominantly
anthropogenic - whose answers often demand specialized
scientific data and understanding - is that refuting free will
can also be relatively easily accomplished by simply
subjecting the notion to the basic logical analysis that
undergirds all science.
In fact one of this screenplay's strengths is that it invites
audiences to, by testing their everyday experiences against a
basic logic requiring neither advanced education nor scientific
knowledge, discover for themselves why they, and by
extension everyone else, lack a free will. But let's focus on why
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the person who produces this film can expect to, following its
release, be publicly and scientifically acknowledged as the
person who bankrolled, or made happen, the greatest
revolution in human thinking our world has ever known.
To understand why he or she will assuredly gain historic
acclaim for leading this greatest of all revolutions in human
thought, take pause to appreciate the ubiquitous state of
confusion - indeed delusion - that currently grips us. Today,
virtually all of our world's societal institutions operate by, and
promote, the view that what we humans think, feel, say and
do is fundamentally up to us. The reality however, as our
experience, logic and best science inform us, is that absolutely
nothing we humans have ever thought, felt, said or done has
even in the slightest extent, or to the smallest degree, been up
to us.
Our world believes that through a mysterious, unexplained
and amorphous attribute we have come to call free will, we
humans can somehow miraculously circumvent, or nullify,
what our personal experience, the universal laws of nature,
and our hard-wired genetic and environmental programming
time and again inform us is actually happening. That we all, in
practice, regularly fail to think, feel, say and do what we'd
prefer is, on its own, evidence enough to convince any
intellect uncorrupted by an egoistic need to author that we are
not, in fact, free to decide as we might prefer.
But the belief in free will is not only absolutely mistaken, it is
quite literally insane. We encounter a powerful irony when we
consult our world's generally accepted authority on what's
sane and insane, modern psychiatry. Under the heading
"Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders,"
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
5
and sLibheading "Delusions," of its most recent edition
detailing what it has determined rises to the level of
psychosis, psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, or DSM-5, asserts that "Delusions
that express a loss of control over mind or body are generally
considered to be bizarre; these include the belief that...one's
body or actions are being acted on or manipulated by some
outside force (delusions of control)."
By this psychiatry strays far beyond the bounds of medicine. It
invades the scientific disciplines of physics, biology, and
psychology to implicitly assert that we can escape
determining factors, or "forces," that operate completely
outside of our control, like the physical laws of nature, our
biological drives, and our unconscious mind.
What psychiatry is essentially claiming is that not only were
our world's top three minds wrong in considering free will an
illusion, they were quite insane in having done so. In fact,
according to the DSM-5, any scientist among today's majority
of neuroscientists who invokes the latest theory and data to
maintain a persistent commitment to rejecting free will is, in
effect, exhibiting a defining symptom of psychosis. Of course
psychiatry does grant neuroscientists the same exemption
enjoyed by millions of people who believe our Earth is less
than six thousand years old; if sufficient numbers hold a
certain belief, regardless of how irrational or unscientific it is,
and this belief doesn't appear to negatively impact their daily
functioning, they thereby escape this diagnosis of delusional
psychosis.
The screenplay also confronts the widespread confusion and
harm our world's other institutions like religion and criminal
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justice perpetuate by promoting free will as an explanation for
human behavior. The film's financer would not only be doing
the world a world of good by setting in motion an historic
global initiative that would over several decades rescue our
world from the bizarre and insidiously harmful belief in free
will. He or she would, as a result, earn unprecedented
scientific acclaim for having bankrolled this greatest
revolution in human thinking to date.
You may have noticed that I've several times referred to our
world evolving beyond the belief in free will as our greatest
revolution in human thinking. Although I've personally held
the view for many years. I'm not alone in this. Before releasing
her 2005 book. Conversations on Consciousness, free will-
refuting psychologist Susan Blackmore asked one of our most
renowned philosophers, John Searle, what it would mean for
our world to understand and accept that free will is an
illusion. His response was that it "would be a bigger
revolution in our thinking than Einstein, or Copernicus, or
Newton, or Galileo, or Darwin - it would alter our whole
conception of our relation with the universe."
My having spent the last eight years leading a movement to
popularise the refutation of free will, one might suspect that,
coming from me, such a grand assertion may perhaps be
somewhat biased. What's especially noteworthy, and
trustworthy, about Searle holding this same assessment is that
he considers himself an agnostic on whether or not free will is
an illusion, and actually leans toward defending the notion.
And before you mistakenly place your hope on the fact that,
"aha, a top philosopher defends free will," consider that as
well-respected as Searle is, ranking 13th among modern world
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
7
philosophers, he in no way approaches the stature and
ranking in science of Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and
Albert Einstein, our world's top minds who were, not
incidentally, also quite adept at philosophizing about the
sciences.
So, the very rich person who is fortunate enough to possess
the intellect, insight and vision to produce - again, especially
meaning finance - this film would not only be helping our
world take a giant leap toward evolving beyond the
completely mistaken and harmful belief in free will, he or she
would also be achieving something of the very highest
scientific and historical significance and influence. Okay, so
our producer-financer will go down in history in a very big
way, but let's take a brief look at all of the good he or she
would accomplish in the process.
A major problem with the belief in free will is that it causes
unfair - indeed immoral - blame. This blame too often leads
to anger, then hostility and conflict, and finally, needless pain
and fear. This relational devolution affects not only our
personal lives, but our societal institutions as well. Let's see
how it affects our daily interactions.
Imagine yourself at a restaurant with four friends. Across the
room sits a man who starts voicing obscenities so loudly that
everyone takes notice. Your friends are visibly disturbed, and
begin sharing vicious comments about him. You, however, do
not join them in this anger and aggression. Why not? Well,
you happen to know the man, and also know that he suffers
from Tourette syndrome, an illness that can cause a person to
do exactly what the man was doing. Because you know this,
you quite understandably don't blame him for either having
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the illness or behaving like someone under its compulsion.
Now imagine a world where everyone understands that free
will is an illusion, and interacts with everyone else according
to that understanding. Sure, the man in the restaurant may be
asked to leave, but without the belief in free will he would be
viewed and confronted with respect and compassion. When
we imagine a world where no one any longer believes in free
will, we're imagining a world where no one any longer
blames anyone for anything. Even the prospect would appear
patently irrational. Our film's producer will have financed the
first giant step toward this far better world.
Let's briefly look at a few other instances where believing in
free will causes us to unfairly blame and punish individuals
for doing what is essentially beyond their control. A gay man
is denied entry to a hospital room where his spouse lies ill
because only family members are allowed this right, and the
hospital happens to be in a country that doesn't recognize gay
marriage. A five-year-old is taught by his church's cleric that if
he doesn't of a free will believe that Jesus is God, he will burn
in hell for all of eternity. He lives his entire adult life in
constant fear of leaving that church and its beliefs. A
philanthropist refuses to help a poor woman because he
believes she freely chose her poverty, and therefore doesn't
deserve his, or anyone else's, help. To him, it doesn't matter
that she became poor because her parents died while she was
just an infant, and she, as a result, never learned how to make
her way in the world.
These are just a few of the countless ways that believing in
free will harms us today, and the screenplay details many
positive changes, like our overcoming guilt, arrogance and
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
9
low self-esteem, that we can expect as ovir world evolves
beyond the belief. Now that we understand the good this
documentary can do, let's see why many millions of people
would line up in theaters around the world to watch it.
First, let's fully appreciate that the film, as its trailer would
show, is telling people who believe that virtually everything
they do is up to them that absolutely nothing they do is ever
up to them. And the film doesn't equivocate on this,
suggesting that perhaps what they do may in some yet
unexplained way be up to them. Expressing the highest
degree of certainty, and presenting numerous experiential,
logical and scientific arguments, it explains to audiences why
free will is categorically and absolutely impossible. Wouldn't
you think that many millions of people would want to witness
for themselves this film that is challenging the very nature of
who we all are as human beings?
Consider the several billion people on the planet who believe
in free will because that's what their religion teaches. Our
documentary informs them of sects and denominations within
the world's five major religions that have rejected free will,
preferring to understand that because God is omnipotent, or
all-powerful, what he wants to happen must happen, and
what he doesn't want to happen, cannot possibly happen. Our
film informs Christians that even the Apostle Paul powerfully
argued against free will in his Letter to the Romans. Wouldn't
you expect that many millions of those religious adherents
would want to know who among them believes that free will
does not exist, and why they hold the belief?
Now think about the many high school and college students
throughout the world. Imagine if before the film is released, as
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part of our marketing strategy, we provide every high school
and college in the world a free, internet-downloadable, half-
hour teaser version. Wouldn't you think a great many teachers
would show their students that teaser, and that many of the
students who watched it would then absolutely need to see
the full-length feature version of this revolutionary film
presenting the most amazing truth they've ever encountered?
And imagine the free publicity that would be generated when
some school systems from America's Bible Belt refuse to show
their students the teaser. The media worldwide would cover
the public's reaction to this film as a modem day equivalent of
the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial where Clarence Darrow
successfully defended evolution.
Because this documentary is teaching audiences something
that would, in effect, turn our world upside down - well,
more accurately, right-side up again - wouldn't you think that
in addition to all of the public and scientific acclaim the film's
financer would receive, he or she would also at least double or
triple their investment of $5 million? The hectomillionaire or
billionaire financing this film will, indeed, feel very fortunate
to have been the one to do so.
And consider the bragging rights he or she would enjoy, being
acknowledged for influencing our world more profoundly
than have personalities like (insert any name you'd like here,
including Bill Gates, Jesus and the Buddha). On a personal
level, that's what leading this biggest revolution in human
thinking is about. Of course I, as the author of this pitch,
proposal and screenplay, would also receive this acclaim...
and our knowing that neither of us did this of a free will
would preserve our humility.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
11
Potential Producer-Financers
To get us started, here are two lists of potential producer-
financers culled from various lists of rich philanthropists. The
second presents philanthropist couples, in case a woman
would like to lead this revolution in human thinking destined
to dwarf all previous ones led by men. If you happen to be
listed, know anyone listed, or perhaps know someone who
knows anyone listed, this could be your opportunity of a
lifetime.
Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Stehen Bechtel, Jeff Bezos, Miguel
Bezos, Len Blavatnick, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Bren,
Sergey Brin, Donald Broan, Warren Buffett, Charles Butt,
Mark Cuban, Ray Dallo, Larry Ellison, Fred Eychaner, Charles
Feeney, Frank Ferguson, Mark Gallogly, David Geffen, David
Gelbaum, Ken Griffin, Ma Huateng, Mark Heising, Dietmar
Hopp, George Kaiser, Li- Ka-shing, Jack Ma, Seth MacFarlane,
Yuri Milner, Elon Musk, Francoise Meyers, Pierre Omidyar,
Amancio Ortega, Larry Page, Sean Parker, Azim Premji,
Roxanne Quinby, Julian Robertson, Richard Rosenthal, Steven
Ross, Herbert Sandler, Stephen Schwartsman, Lynn
Shusterman, Deborah Simon, Liz Simons, Jeffrey Skoll, Carlos
Slim, Alexander Soros, George Soros, Aaron Sosnick, Thomas
Steyer, Jon Stryker, Pat Stryker, Donald Sussman, Dale Taylor,
David Trone, Earnest Tschannen, Ted Turner, Leslie Williams,
Robert Wilson, Oprah Winfrey, Hansjoerg Wyss, Mark
Zuckerberg.
Daniel and Ewa Abraham, William and Karen Ackman, John
and Laura Arnold, Reinier and Nancy Beeuwkes, Marc and
Lynne Benloff, Eli and Edythe Broad, Steve and Alexandra
Cohen, Michael and Susan Dell, Paul and Joanne Egerman,
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Amy and Cary Fowler, Bill and Melinda Gates, Henry and
Carol Goldberg, Amos and Barbara Hostetter, Jon and Karen
Huntsman, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, Bruce and Martha Karsh,
Richard and Nancy Kinder, Henry and Marsha Laufer
Laurence and Aberly Lebowitz, Bernard and Bill Marcus,
George and Judith Marcus, Gordon and Betty Moore, Dustin
and Cari Moskovitz, Trevor and Jan Rees-Jones, Steward and
Lynda Resnick, Chaim and Cheryl Saban, Bernard and Irene
Schwartz, David and Beth Shaw, James and Marilyn Simons,
Paul and Cynthia Skjodt, Doug and Kris Tompkins.
Contact Information
If you're interested in making the film, or are in touch with a
potential producer-financer, call me at 914-349-7381. Leave a
message with your name, location, phone number and email
address, and we'll talk.
Well, that's the pitch. I hope you're sold. The film proposal
that follows describes the project in more detail, and includes
a summary of the screenplay.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
13
The Film Proposal
Logline
Three of our greatest minds, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud
and Albert Einstein, each understood that human free will
does not exist. This documentary film explains to the world
why they are right, and why our knowing this matters
profoundly.
Topic Summary
Free will is the belief that what we humans do is up to us, and
that nothing outside of our control makes us act as we do. The
notion has been a foundation of our global civilization for
millennia. The problem, however, is that free will is an
illusion. Through several explanations designed to be readily
understandable by viewers of average intelligence, this
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documentary explains not only why we humans do not have a
free will, but also how we can create a better world by
evolving beyond the belief. Such an accomplishment would be
no small matter. Eminent American philosopher, John Searle,
has said that for our world to acknowledge free will to be an
illusion:
would be a bigger revolution in our thinking than
Einstein, or Copernicus, or Newton, or Galileo, or
Darwin — it would alter our whole conception of our
relation with the universe.
The film is about launching and leading this revolution.
Tone of the Film
Although accepting our position will be a major challenge to
some, the film's tone is decidedly positive and optimistic. It is
designed to leave viewers astounded, and feeling that they
have gained something of great value.
Project Description
This documentary is intended for world-wide theatrical
release as a major motion picture. Accompanying this
proposal is a Concept and Narration Screenplay crafted to guide
the producer, director and writers through the film's major
points, and to suggest an order for their presentation, while
also granting the production team maximum creative
freedom. Throughout development, production and
marketing, I will remain available as a consultant.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
15
The Timing is Right
For centuries, the question of whether we humans have a free
will languished in obscurity within academia. That has
recently changed.
• In April, 2011, the major British weekly. New Scientist,
became our world's first magazine to publish a cover
story refuting free will with a piece titled "Free Will:
The Illusion We Can't Live Without."
• About a year later, in May, 2012, the prestigious
American science bi-monthly. Scientific American -
Mind, ran its own cover story exposing free will titled
"How Neuroscience and Physics Dictate Your 'Free'
Will."
• Three years later, in May, 2015, the British Broadcasting
Corporation, (BBC) became the third major magazine to
devote a cover story to challenging free will with a
piece titled "Free Will: The Greatest Illusion?" in its
monthly magazine, BBC Focus._
• And almost a year later, in March, 2016, Philosophy Now
became the world's first philosophy magazine to
challenge the notion of free will on its cover with the
piece, "Free Will: Are We Free to Choose?"
The timing is now ideal for a major theatrical-release
documentary film that unambiguously refutes free will, and
explains to world-wide audiences the scientific, historic and
social significance of this major development.
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Audience Appeal
Because the belief in free will is so widespread, the global
public should be strongly intrigued by our challenge to the
notion. The film should spark a deep and impassioned
conversation throughout every region of the world. Political
progressives working on issues like civil rights, equality,
poverty, discrimination, and criminal justice reform should
welcome the film. While appreciating the film's scientific
importance. Conservatives who tend to "blame the victim"
may find it disconcerting. Religious organizations will find
that the film's central message challenges one of their core
beliefs, however the historic evidence we present should
motivate adherents to see for themselves why many among
their ranks have rejected the idea of a human free will.
Financer/Producer's Investment and Benefits
As the financer/producer, in addition to the widespread
public and professional acclaim you would garner for having
made this major scientific revolution happen, you would earn
an estimated return of at least 200 percent on your investment
of approximately $3 million to make the film, and no more
than $2 million to market and distribute it world-wide.
Financer/Producer's Control
You would have full control over the project, excluding the
following conditions:
1. The film is to be unequivocal about free will being an
illusion.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
17
2. The film is to be positive and optimistic.
3. The film must premiere within three years of our
written contract.
4. I am to receive the following, or equivalent, credits:
Created by; Produced by; Concept and Narration
Screenplay by; Key Consultant.
Those conditions accepted, I welcome your full involvement
in, and ideas about, the project.
Synopsis
The film begins with a series of dramatic scenes intended to
help audiences who are not accustomed to watching
documentaries feel more comfortable with the format. The
film next surveys past revolutions in human thinking as a
lead-in to Searle and top academic authorities voicing the
position that exposing free will as an illusion would probably
be the greatest of these to date. At this point, the film's title,
"Free Will: Moving Beyond the Illusion" and opening credits
appear. We then invite the audience to take an active role in
launching and leading this historic revolution.
In the next sequences, academic philosophers and
psychologists define free will, and describe what the debate
has been about for the last two millennia. We follow up with
quotes by leading scientists Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud,
and Albert Einstein that establish the highest authority for the
film's position that free will is an illusion. Leading modern
academics then explain in greater detail why humans never
choose anything freely. The audience now has a clear
understanding of what the film is about. We then shift back to
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dramatic vignettes to explain how our belief in free will harms
us. At this point, the film's major themes have all been
introduced.
We now lead viewers through the logic of why we don't have
a free will by first asking them to reflect on their personal
experiences. We next present three idiomatic expressions
including "don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in
his shoes" to show that, as a society, we already implicitly
understand that what we humans do is not actually up to us.
Anticipating that audiences are now feeling uncomfortable
with the increasing clarity and strength of this revelation, we
calm their minds by briefly explaining why this truth need not
prevent them from their fully enjoying their lives.
We then present the hard scientific evidence for why free will
is impossible, beginning with an explanation of the physical
law of cause and effect, and how it relates to human actions.
In order to best communicate the material, we use graphics
extensively in these sequences. Presenting the quantum
mechanics-based contention that perhaps some aspects of our
world happen in an indeterministic, or uncaused, manner, we
then proceed to explain why the prospect of uncaused events
offers no help in rescuing the notion of free will.
The film next turns to biology to explain how nature and
nurture, both separately and in tandem, also render human
free will impossible, and how our instinctual drives support
this conclusion. Following sequences present the audience
with a psychological explanation of why thoughts we
ordinarily attribute to a conscious will are actually initiated at
the level of our unconscious, providing more scientific
evidence that a human free will is simply impossible.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
19
Having described the logic and theory that refute free will, we
now strengthen our position with hard empirical evidence
from psychology experiments. We then follow up with even
stronger empirical data from neuroscience experiments
showing that our thoughts originate in our unconscious rather
than through a conscious free will.
Because 90 percent of Americans believe in God, or a higher
power, we next address the free will question from a religious
perspective. The film provides historical evidence that major
sects within our five major world religions, Hinduism,
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have rejected free
will in favor of an all-powerful, all-knowing God and the
principle of cause and effect.
The film next briefly reviews the personal, philosophical,
scientific and religious refutations of free will presented thus
far, and reiterates why our belief in free will harms us both as
individuals and as a global society. We now provide filmgoers
with an extended transition from our documentary format
through a series of comparative vignettes that show the many
ways our belief in free will harms us, and how our evolving
beyond the belief allows us to overcome this harm.
Confident that the audience now empathizes with the harm
our belief in free will causes, we next explore why some
philosophers and scientists continue to defend free will, and
why the concerns underlying these defenses are misguided
and unfounded.
In greater detail, we then describe how our free will belief
corrupts our global religions, law, economics, social progress,
and public health. After one last time briefly revisiting the
20
GEORGE ORTEGA
film's major themes, we present an optimistic vision of our
world evolving beyond the belief in free will. The film now
offers the audience a more complete and detailed invitation to
play an important role in launching and leading this great
revolution. It ends with a reprise of the past great revolutions
in human thinking, followed by the reiteration that our world
understanding and acknowledging free will to be an illusion
is very likely the greatest revolution in human thinking that
our world has yet undergone.
My Experience with the Topic
While this is my first film, since 2010 I have produced, written
and hosted over 300 half-hour episodes on the topic of free
will for two televisions series, including a live call-in show on
Manhattan's MNN. I've published two books refuting free
will, and describing the problems we can overcome as our
world evolves beyond the notion. I've also moderated over
100 public discussions in Manhattan, and hosted over 180
podcast episodes, on the topic. I continue to maintain a
website and a blog dedicated to popularizing the refutation of
free will.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
21
The Concept-Narration Screenplay
Screenplay Font and Formatting Key
The screenplay text is presented using the following fonts and
formatting:
• Section Introductions: Palatino Linotype - italics
• Sequence Descriptions and Directives: [Palatino
Linotype - bold, bracketed]
• Narration: Palatino Linotype
22
GEORGE ORTEGA
Introductory Vignettes: Human Will Belief in Our Lives
Showing that our view of human will determines how we treat
ourselves and others, the following introductory vignettes intend to
help movie-goers who are not accustomed to watching
documentaries feel more at home. Later in the film, we return to
them as a way of showing how our personal relationships can
improve as our world overcomes the belief in free will.
[1. A little league baseball field scoreboard shows the
batter's team is down by a run in the bottom of the ninth,
with a runner at second base, two outs, and the batter at full
count 3-2. The nine-year-old girl at the plate hits a home run,
and is carried off the field by her teammates.]
[2. A 12-year-old obese boy is ridiculed and bullied by his
peers because of his weight.]
[3. A woman in her 40s is shown at a podium being handed a
plaque in recognition of a great scientific achievement.]
[4. An alcoholic man who is about to commit suicide is
writing a suicide note. We hear his words as he writes "My
dear wife and children, I am so sorry about all of the pain
I've caused you with my drinking. What I have done to our
family is unforgivable, and I no longer deserve to live. I will
always love you."]
[5. A man hovers over his wife, who is cowering on a sofa.
He yells at her, "This is your fault. You are to blame for all
of this! You knew what you had to do, but you didn't do it
because you are selfish, and don't care!"]
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
23
Survey of Past Revolutions in Human Thinking
The tone of these sequences is epic, reflecting the importance of the
revolutions, and of this film. Full orchestral music rich in powerful,
dynamic elements evoke and sustain this grand tone throughout.
The sequences serve as a lead-in to the upcoming quote by
philosopher John Searle that represents one of the film's central
themes.
A revolution in human thinking is something that, usually in
the most profound of ways, changes how we view our world.
It often completely upends what we had thought was true,
and replaces it with what is actually true. It always begins
with a sense of wonder.
Long before recorded history began, our ancestors wondered
about our Sun and Moon and about the other lights in the
night sky that we now call stars. They wondered about the
clouds that bring life-sustaining rain, and about strange
phenomena like thunder and lightning, and furious gusts of
wind.
Turning this awakened curiosity toward themselves and other
living beings, they wondered about the mysteries of life and
death. With this, the revolution in human thinking we call
spirituality began. Spirituality was our ancestors' first attempt
to understand ourselves and our relation to the world, and it
evolved into the religious traditions we follow today.
As they learned to use fire and make tools, those early
humans embarked on that next major revolution in human
thinking that we today call science. Science provided us with a
vastly more accurate way of understanding our world.
24
GEORGE ORTEGA
Since then, there have been several other major revolutions in
human thinking.
The scientific diagnosis and treatment of injuries and illnesses
that we today call medicine had already begun by about 2,600
B.C.E. when the Egyptian scholar and priest, Imhotep, became
the world's first physician known to us by name.
The Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras,
spearheaded the next big revolution in human thought 2,100
years later at around 500 B.C.E. with his discovery that our
world is not flat; it is actually a sphere. One can scarcely
imagine the deep confusion this new truth brought to the
people of that time.
About two thousand years later, in 1543, Polish astronomer
and mathematician, Nicolaus Copernicus, corrected our belief
that the Earth is at the center of everything with the humbling
explanation that our planet, and the other known planets, all
revolve around our Sun.
In 1687, English physicist and mathematician. Sir Isaac
Newton, formulated his laws of motion and of gravitation to
solve the mystery of why those of us living at the bottom of
our spherical planet don't fall off, and in the process launched
our era of modem physics.
In 1859, another English scientist, Charles Darwin, launched
the next major revolution in human thought with his theory of
evolution, explaining that we humans descended from ape¬
like creatures, who in turn descended from treeshrew-like
animals, who had descended from single-celled organisms.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
25
A half-century later, in the early 1900s, the German physicist.
Max Planck, Austrian physicists, Albert Einstein and Erwin
Schrodinger, and others, introduced us to the next world¬
changing revolution in human thinking; quantum mechanics.
We learned that our world is vastly more strange than we
imagined. For example, because of what's called quantum
entanglement, we discovered that a particle at one end of our
universe can communicate with its entangled partner at the
opposite end of our universe at a speed thousands of times
faster than the speed of light.
Also in the early 1900s, Einstein's theories of special and
general relativity comprised the next big revolution in human
thought. Completely upending our understanding of reality,
he showed that space and time are actually a single entity that
is curved by objects like our Earth, Sun and Moon. Einstein
also taught us that what seems like the past to one observer is
actually the future to a second observer. And, through his
famous equation, E = me 2 , he showed us that matter and
energy are actually different manifestations of the same
universal stuff.
Also at the turn of the twentieth century, Austrian,
neurologist, Sigmund Freud, unveiled to us the vast hidden
realm of our mind that we call the unconscious, explaining
how it, and not our conscious mind, determines so much of
who we humans are.
In 1927, Belgian Priest and physicist, George Lemaitre, posited
that our universe began billions of years ago, and was smaller
than an atom at an event we now call the Big Bang.
26
GEORGE ORTEGA
And because of pioneering work by astronomers in the 1920s
like the Dutch, Jan Oort, the American, Edwin Hubble and
others, scientists today believe that the part of the universe we
humans interact with comprises only about five percent of
what's actually out there.
These revolutions in human thought have dramatically
transformed our understanding of who we are, and of the
world we inhabit. But there is a much grander revolution in
human thought that awaits; one that, as you watch this film,
you are taking an important and active part in. This revolution
is so significant in its ramifications that it dwarfs all previous
revolutions in human thought.
"A Bigger Revolution in Our Thinking than Einstein..."
These sequences present one of the film's central themes, the biggest
revolution in human thinking our world has ever known, and serve
as a lead-in to the film's title and opening credits.
Asked to weigh in on what it would mean if free will was
acknowledged by our world to be just an illusion, American
philosopher John Searle said that this would represent "a
bigger revolution in our thinking than Einstein, or
Copernicus, or Newton, or Galileo, or Darwin - it would alter
our whole conception of our relation with the universe."
So, what do modem scientists and philosophers say about our
world coming to understand and accept that free will is - that
it must be - an illusion, and that absolutely nothing we
humans ever do is in any fundamental sense truly up to us?
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
27
Modern Thinkers Echo and Expand on the Searle Quote
In these sequences, interview clips of top modern thinkers from
various academic disciplines confirm and expand on Searle's
statement, reinforcing for the audience that his proposition, and the
film's main message, enjoy a strong and widespread consensus
among our world's most authoritative modern scholars.
[Title of film - "FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE
ILLUSION," and opening credits appear.]
Inviting a Partnership with the Audience
These sequences invite audiences to participate in, and take
ownership of, the mission of leading our world to a historically new
perspective on our shared reality, and on what it means to be human.
The better audiences understand and accept their role in this grand
endeavor, the more they will contribute to the film's success by
enthusiastically recruiting friends and family to see the film, and
join the mission.
Our world is now on the cusp of this biggest revolution in
human thought. By watching this film, each and every one of
you is taking an active and very important role in launching
the greatest revolution in human thought that our world has
ever undergone. So let's now proceed with this historic work
by exploring exactly what the idea of a free will means, and
better understanding why such a notion is absolutely, and
unequivocally, impossible.
28
GEORGE ORTEGA
Defining Free Will; History, Moral Implications and
Academic Definitions
Before the film can effectively refute free will, the audience must be
very clear about what the term means and implies. The following
sequences provide these clarifications, and present clips of academics
defining free will so that authority for our definition is established.
We begin by defining exactly what we mean by the term free
will. Tellingly, although the ancient Greeks had words for fate
and destiny, they had no words for will or human will, and no
term that meant free will. Back then, virtually everyone
believed that the gods and the fates caused everything that
happened to happen, including everything we human beings
think, feel, say and do.
Neither is the term free will found anywhere in the Bible's
original text, written in Hebrew and Aramaic. In fact, Paul,
writing in Romans L argues quite forcefully against the notion.
At chapter seven, verse fifteen, he writes: "I don't understand
myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can't. I
do what I don't want to do - what I hate."
The phrase free will wasn't actually coined until 380 A.D.,
long after the Bible was written, by Augustine, the bishop of
Hippo. In his book De Libero Arbitrio, which is Latin for "on
free will," Augustine introduced the term as an attempt to
explain the existence of evil, and to justify God's punishment.
He wrote that "Evil deeds are punished by the justice of God.
They would not be punished justly if they had not been
performed voluntarily."
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
29
Our modern authoritative definition of free will is in
agreement with Augustine in describing free will as what
deems the human doer fundamentally responsible for his or
her actions, and, therefore, fundamentally deserving of either
punishment or praise. The Free will idea asserts that we are
fundamentally responsible for our moral behavior, and,
therefore, fundamentally deserve the rewards and
punishments that what we do may bring. To better
understand this, let's examine the notion of fundamental
moral responsibility more closely, focusing on the key concept
of fundamentality.
Imagine that you are attending your best friend's wedding,
and you happen to fall asleep during the ceremony. We would
all probably agree that your doing this would generally be
considered very rude, and morally wrong.
But consider that the reason you dozed off was because prior
to the service you stopped by a pharmacy to pick up a
medicine your doctor prescribed to treat a back injury you
were afraid might actually keep you from attending the
wedding. And, unfortunately, because of a computer glitch,
instead of giving you the right medication, your pharmacist
gave you a powerful sedative designed to put you to sleep
soon after taking it.
Can we now still hold you fundamentally responsible and
morally wrong for dozing off during the service? Of course
not. You were, in fact, actually the victim, along with everyone
else at the ceremony, of a very unfortunate fate. We'll return
to this idea of fundamental moral responsibility later. For
now, let's continue to explore what the term free will actually
means.
30
GEORGE ORTEGA
[Interview clips of several academic philosophers and
psychologists present various accurate definitions of free
will.]
That's what we today think of when we talk about free will.
That's what our dictionaries and encyclopedias refer to when
they define, and describe, the concept of free will.
Establishing Authority in Refuting Free Will
In these sequences, we highlight that Charles Darwin, Sigmund
Freud, and Albert Einstein, three widely respected scientists of the
very highest rank, hold the film's position of rejecting the notion of
free will. Through interviews with modern thinkers, this refutation
is further strengthened. As the public often relies in part on the
authority of experts to establish their personal positions on certain
matters, these sequences are designed to prime audiences to better
accept and appreciate the arguments against free will that the film
subsequently presents.
That's the free will he was refuting when Charles Darwin
considered, "the general delusion about free will obvious,"
...and when Sigmund Freud said, "You nourish the notion of
there being such a thing as psychical freedom, and you will
not give it up. I am sorry to say I disagree with you
categorically over this,"
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
31
.. .and when Albert Einstein said:
I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's
words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he
cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all
situations throughout my life and reconcile me
with the actions of others, even if they are rather
painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free
will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow
men too seriously as acting and deciding
individuals, and from losing my temper.
What do some of today's notable scientists and philosophers
have to say about this notion of free will?
[Interview clips present various top scientists and
philosophers refuting free will.]
While Darwin, Freud, Einstein and many modern thinkers
have understood that free will is an illusion, this
understanding is not like climate change and other matters in
science where their complexity demands that most of us rely
on the authority of experts.
Through the application of some fundamental principles of
science and reason, virtually any of us can understand why
our greatest thinkers rejected the notion of free will. But before
we do that, let's explore the pervasive, widespread harm our
belief in free will brings us.
32
GEORGE ORTEGA
The Personal Destructiveness of Free Will Belief: Two Cases
Strengthening the priming effect of previous sequences, these
following narrated vignettes prepare audiences to side with the film's
position by presenting two cases depicting how our belief in free will
is far more destructive to individuals than most of us realize.
Imagine a boy aged 16 named Charles, burdened by the
constant bickering of his parents, who will within a few years
sever their marital ties completely through an ugly divorce.
Charles becomes increasingly unable to concentrate in school.
His grades begin to fall. His friends, unable to understand the
dour moods that too often consume Charles, abandon him.
Eventually, completely discouraged, he drops out of school,
but cannot find a job because of the lack of confidence he
projects at job interviews.
Charles blames himself for his plight, and this self-
condemnation makes matters much worse. The painful guilt
he feels grows stronger, and more destructive. He should have
been able to do well in school, and not have dropped out, he
tells himself. He should have been able to keep his friends. He
should have been able to get a job. Finally after months of this
self-blame, and of his parents now blaming him for these
failures, Charles loses all hope. He attempts suicide, and
spends the next year on medication and in therapy trying to
put his life back together.
Now imagine a woman named Sharon who is 35 years old,
and has been seriously obese for as long as she can remember.
She has never been out on a date. She has never even had a
man ask her out. Wherever she goes, people ignore or avoid
her.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
33
She looks aroLind at the thinner people everywhere, and
concludes that there must be something very wrong with her.
More and more, she sees herself as a weak person with no
willpower, and blames herself for this failing.
At her job, her co-workers seldom let on directly about how
they view her, but she occasionally hears them whispering
cruel, shameful things about her. As the years pass, so does
Sharon's lust for life. She was raised well. She doesn't start
drinking or attempt suicide. She doesn't lash out at the people
who routinely shame her. She just plods on, working day after
day, quietly enduring a long, lonely and sad life.
Our belief in free will causes far more suffering, and destroys
many more lives, than we realize. Now that we better
appreciate why our world overcoming this harmful belief
represents much more than a revolution in human thought,
let's begin to see for ourselves why the notion of a free will
has absolutely no basis in reality.
Inviting Audiences to, through Personal Experience, Refute
Free Will
The film's free will-refutation sequences begin strongly by inviting
audiences to discover for themselves, using a simple test, why free
will is an illusion. By first leading audiences through a personal
rejection of free will, the film helps viewers better appreciate the
more traditional logical and scientific refutations that follow.
Let's now come to our own personal understanding of why a
human free will is - why it must be - an illusion.
34
GEORGE ORTEGA
Remember that free will means that our thoughts are
fundamentally up to us. The idea of free will says we are free
to think one thought rather than another, and to make one
choice rather than another. As a matter of fact, free will says
we're actually free not to make any choice at all if we wish.
That's the notion of free will that Augustine coined, and that
we are exploring.
Let's put it to the test. For the next ten seconds, I want every
one of you now watching this film to not think any thoughts
at all. That's right; I want you to choose to make your mind go
completely blank. Ready? Let's begin -
[A big clock on the screen counts up from one to ten in big
digits, as the narrator voices each number.]
Well, how did you do? Were you able to clear your mind
completely? My guess is that, if you who kept your eyes and
ears open, you couldn't help but think about at least one of
those numbers that flashed on the screen, and that I voiced
out loud. So, where was your free will? Where was your
ability to freely choose what you will think about?
Let's put the notion of free will to a second test. For this one,
during the next ten seconds I want you all to choose to think
of nothing but a banana. We all have the free will to choose
that, right? Here we go.
[The narrator counts from one to ten, this time in Spanish,
and the screen shows images of many other fruits, and one
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
35
image designed to make the audience laugh, (i.e., the Fruit
of the Loom characters]
Hmmm. Did I hear some laughter out there? Were any of you
who had your eyes open able to resist thinking about apples
and oranges and (reference to the humorous image)? Were
any of you who had your ears open able to avoid thinking
about how this time I counted up to ten in Spanish? And for
any of you who may have been tipped off about this test in
advance, and kept your eyes and ears closed throughout, were
you able to resist bragging to yourself about how you were, of
your own free will, thinking only about the banana, and
ironically, by doing so, demonstrating to yourself that you
had not, in fact, thought only about the banana?
Inviting Audiences' Personal Moral Experience to Refute
Free Will
Using their own moral experiences to help them understand why we
don't have a free will, here the film invites audiences to extend their
personal rejection of free will to include their moral decisions. These
sequences continue to help viewers personally reject the idea of free
will before being presented with the formal logical and scientific
refutations.
Do any of you think these tests were unfair? Do you think that
because I asked you to focus on what I wanted, maybe this
test really wasn't about your choice. Some of you may be
thinking that free will is not about emptying your mind of all
36
GEORGE ORTEGA
thoughts, or about focusing on bananas. Free will, you say, is
really about whether our moral decisions - our decisions
about right and wrong - are truly up to us. Okay, let's put this
idea of our having the free will to do what's right or what's
wrong to the test.
For this one, I want you all to first think about the people you
love the most in the world - the people you wouldn't want to
hurt for anything in the world.
Now think of a time when you actually did hurt them - when
you became angry, maybe lost your temper, raised your voice,
and let them have it. You said some things to them that really
hurt their feelings, and afterwards felt bad about it because
you knew in your heart that what you said was mean, and
hurtful, and wrong.
Now ask yourself, if you knew it was wrong when you did it,
why did you do it? Why didn't you just use your free will to
control your temper, and stop yourself from saying those
mean, hurtful things?
Or, maybe back when you said those things, you didn't realize
how hurtful they were. Maybe you realized how wrong and
hurtful you were only after you calmed down, and really
thought about what you had said.
We're now faced with two problems. If you believe that you
had the free will to know, at the time you said those things,
that they were wrong, why didn't you use your free will to
not say them? The other possibility is that you did not, at the
time you said them, have the free will to realize that saying
those mean things was wrong. Either way, it seems quite clear
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
37
that we don't truly have a free will to always do the right
thing, or to refrain from doing the wrong thing, anytime we
want.
Establishing Society's Idiomatic Rejection of Free Will
In these sequences, the film moves from a personal to a societal
means of helping audiences challenge free will by asking them to
recall several well-known sayings that reflect society's rejection of
the notion.
I think that deep down you already knew that. I think that
deep down we all already understand that nobody ever really
has a free will. Some of us may think this revelation is
something very new. But, if we take a look at several well-
known sayings that have been around for many years, we will
see that our understanding that we really don't have a free
will has a long history.
Have you ever come to someone's defense as they were being
yelled at? Do you remember saying to the angry person
something like, "stop yelling; he was doing the best he could,"
or "she was doing the best she could!" Well, whether or not
you realized it at the time, by doing that you were
acknowledging to yourself, and reminding that angry person,
that we really don't have a free will.
Or have you ever heard the expression, or walked by a
homeless person and thought to yourself, "There but for the
grace of God go I."
38
GEORGE ORTEGA
We think that to ourselves, and say that to others, because
deep down in our heart we know very well that no one ever
freely chooses to become homeless. We know deep down in
our heart that mental illness, or addiction, or incredibly bad
luck, or one of many other kinds of other reasons that were
completely outside of that person's control, really explains
why that person is homeless.
Finally, have you ever heard or used the expression "don't
judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes." Too
often we rush to judgment not really understanding the
circumstances that lead others to act as they do. When we
pause to consider that if we were in their situation, we might
act the same way, we become far more honest and fair about
our judgments.
"Fie was doing the best he could," "There but for the grace of
God go I," "Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in
his shoes." These are very popular sayings that have been
with us for many, many years. And those of us who have
heard them or thought them know very well that their
meaning is that what we do or don't do is not fundamentally
up to us, or up to a free will.
A bit later, we'll go into all of this in much more detail, and
bring in some science to help us better understand why we do
not - why we absolutely cannot - have a free will. But right
now you may be beginning to have some strong reactions
over coming face to face with this truth that free will is
nothing but an illusion. So, before we continue, let's address
some of these feelings and concerns.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
39
Calming Audiences' Fears about Abandoning Free Will
Belief
Having now used authoritative statements, personal experience and
cultural idioms to challenge the notion of free will, these next
sequences help viewers feel better, as the foundation for a belief they
strongly held begins to crumble. Gaining audiences' emotional
acceptance of free will being an illusion is as important to the film's
mission as is gaining their cognitive understanding of this truth.
As Shakespeare wrote in his play. As You Like It L "all the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
Some of us may be afraid that our accepting this truth will sap
some pleasure from life. But, think about it; how thoroughly
do we now enjoy the novels we read, and the movies, plays
and TV shows we watch, while fully accepting that we neither
authored, nor have a role in, them? Actually, understanding
and accepting that we are all merely actors in a grand cosmic
theatrical production will more likely lead us to see our lives,
and our world, as far more wonderful, as far more full of
wonder.
Some of us may fear that once our world acknowledges and
accepts that free will is an illusion, the rules that guide our
personal lives and the laws that structure our civilization will
collapse. But, as we'll see later, while we will always need to
hold ourselves and each other accountable for the right and
wrong we do, we can accomplish this far more productively
by abandoning our belief in free will.
As we will also see later in the film, by evolving beyond the
misplaced blame, and the resulting conflict, that too often
accompanies our belief in free will, we can create a far more
40
GEORGE ORTEGA
intelligent, harmonious, compassionate and happy world. But
let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's now look at the hard
science and unassailable logic that shows why free will is an
illusion.
How Universal Causality Refutes Free Will
Here the film begins its formal refutations of free will with the most
widely known, fundamental, and comprehensive arguments; that
causality, or the law of cause and effect, and acausality, or
theoretically uncaused events, both make free will impossible.
Somewhat bizarrely, among scientists today, there is not full
agreement about whether, at its most fundamental subatomic,
or quantum, level, our reality is completely governed by
causality, more commonly known as the law of cause and
effect, or whether some physical events occur without their
having been caused by anything - happening acausally.
Setting aside some profoundly serious conceptual difficulties
that accompany the notion of an uncaused event, it is
nonetheless abundantly clear that free will is made equally
impossible by both causality and acausality - by both caused
and uncaused events.
Causality can be considered a logical principle as well as a
physical law. Let's explore why free will cannot exist in a
causal universe. Under the causal model, when anything in
our world happens, there must be a reason, or cause, that
explains why it happened. For example, when a ball we held
in our hand falls to the ground, we understand that gravity
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
41
caused it to fall. When day turns to night, we know that our
Earth's rotation has caused this change. And when we awaken
from sleep each morning, we know that something in our
brain caused this change.
Here are some other examples of the cause and effect
relationship that exists when anything happens.
[Graphics depict 5-10 quick, brief causal relationships]
We see that, according to causality, everything that happens
has a reason; every effect has a cause. And this means that
whatever causes anything to happen must also have a cause,
and that this cause must also, itself, have had a cause, which
also must have had a cause.
[Graphics depict 5-10 quick, brief causal chains.]
We can use dominos to illustrate this chain of cause and effect.
First, it's important to understand that a cause must always
come before its effect. In our example, each domino that falls
is the effect of the one in front of it tumbling, which is the
cause. Here, we see that the first domino in the chain causes
the second one to tumble, the second causes the third, the
third the forth, and so on. Each domino that falls is the effect
of the one before it that caused it to fall.
Now let's apply this understanding of causality to a decision
we might make, like whether we will come to the aid of a
42
GEORGE ORTEGA
friend in need. What caused us to come to his aid? Let's say
that we helped our friend because as a child we had learned to
treat others like we would like to be treated, and we came to
value this important lesson.
So, what caused us to value this lesson? Let's say we were
once helped by someone when we needed help, and we
remembered how grateful we had felt. And what caused us to
learn this lesson of helping others? We probably learned it
from people who love us, like our parents.
Our parents taught us the lesson of treating others as we
would like to be treated, our experience of needing and
receiving help caused us to value this lesson, and our valuing
the lesson caused us to come to the aid of our friend.
Here, however, we've been exploring cause and effect from
the psychological perspective of looking for reasons that
explain why we do what we do. But causality, as we saw
before, has a more precise and universal meaning. The law of
cause and effect fundamentally explains the relationship
between everything that happened in the past and everything
that happens in the present, and the relationship between
everything that happens in the present and everything that
will happen in the future.
A good way to understand this universal causality, and see
how it explains absolutely everything about our past, present
and future, is to start at the very beginning of everything that
we know to exist; the beginning of our entire observable
universe.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
43
The Liniverse that we can observe came into being 13.8 billion
years ago with the Big Bang event that caused our universe to
expand to its current size. Scientists are quick to admit that
they have no idea what caused that event, but,
philosophically, many believe that it didn't just happen.
Something must have caused the Big Bang event that began
our known universe.
Now let's take a look at how our universe expanded, moment
by moment, from that initial Big Bang to what is happening
right now. To better illustrate this we'll use dominos, this time
to represent each moment, or state, of the universe.
According to what we can observe and deduce, the Big Bang
event completely and directly caused our entire known
universe at its second moment. This must be so because the
Big Bang event was the only thing that existed at that time
that could have caused that second moment.
Each new moment results in an expanded new state of our
universe. So our entire universe at its second state caused our
universe at its expanded third state. This third state caused its
more expanded fourth state, its fourth state, its fifth, and so on
through an all-encompassing chain of cause and effect that
over almost 14 billion years brought us to the state of the
universe today.
It's important to keep in mind that the state of the universe at
one moment is the complete cause of not just the entire state of
the universe at the next moment; it's also the complete cause
of every single event happening within that next state.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
To illustrate this point, blink your eyes right now. Under the
causal model we're exploring, that blinking was completely
caused by - was the direct effect of - the state of the universe at
the moment just before you blinked. To suggest otherwise
would be to either suggest that your blinking had no cause at
all, or that it was caused by something that is not a part of our
observable universe. With this latter possibility, we would be
suggesting that something outside of our observable universe
- and we could define this as some unknown realm within our
theoretically infinite universe - caused us to blink. But
because causality is both a physical law and a logical
principle, the same reasoning that applies to our known
universe would also apply to this more expansive, infinite
universe.
In other words, in this latter case, our behavior would have
been caused by previous states of this theoretically infinite
and eternal universe that includes both what we know exists
and what we don't.
So, if we follow the states of these two universal models back
in time, moment by moment, state by state, we discover that
our blinking was either initially caused by the Big Bang event,
or by whatever caused both the Big Bang and all subsequent
events.
In this latter case, what we face is an infinite regress going
further and further back in time. In neither scenario, however,
can we conclude that we of a free will caused our eyes to
blink.
We can, of course, substitute any thought, feeling or action for
our blinking, and reach the same conclusion. Our actions are
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
45
not freely caused by us; they are completely caused, or
compelled, by previous states of the universe.
This understanding is not limited to human actions and
choices. It also applies to the actions of every drop of rain,
every grain of sand, and every gust of wind, we have ever
observed; every molecule, atom and particle. What it means to
be living in a completely causal universe is that our reality is
very much like a movie, with each frame representing each
evolving unique state of our universe.
This is why, under a universe governed by the law of cause
and effect, what we humans do can never, in any fundamental
sense, be up to us, and why we do not therefore have a free
will.
How Universal Acausality Refutes Free Will
It's important for audiences to understand that invoking
interpretations of quantum mechanics that challenge the causality
inherent in determinism do nothing to salvage the concept of free
will. These following sequences explain this understanding.
But what if this causal model is wrong? As our modern
physicists and philosophers will eventually come to accept,
this model is not wrong. But, just for the sake of argument,
what if at its most fundamental level some events in our
reality, in our universe, are acausal? What if some events,
including some human choices, only appear to be caused, but
in reality just happen, without any cause whatsoever?
46
GEORGE ORTEGA
Again, setting aside profoundly serious conceptual problems
that confront this acausal model, what if acausality accurately
describes the fundamental nature of our universe?
To answer this question, we need to keep in mind exactly
what the notion of free will requires. Free will says that a
human being causes every decision that a human being makes.
A categorically insurmountable problem for this acausal
model is that neither we, nor an alleged free will, can be
logically considered the cause of a decision, or any other
action, that we are asserting does not fundamentally have a
cause.
And if, as has been suggested, some events in our universe are
caused, and others are not caused, how does this prospect
offer any defense for a free will? If some of our decisions, or
some parts of our decisions, are caused, the law of cause and
effect, as we have already seen, renders free will impossible. If
we suggest that some of our decisions, or some parts of our
decisions, are not caused, how can we then, in any way,
conclude that we or our free will, or, in fact, anything at all,
caused them? By definition, an acausal decision is uncaused. It
can in no logical or scientific sense be held to have been
caused by a human being or a free will.
Most importantly, when we recall that the notion of free will
demands that we hold human beings fundamentally morally
responsible for our actions, how can an acausal model
possibly explain that?
At the heart of the logic behind why we consider a human act
moral or immoral lays the inescapable truth that our moral
actions are predicated upon, or caused by, distinct moral
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
47
principles we are choosing to uphold or abide by.
But the acausal model does not meet this necessary condition.
To say that a decision is uncaused is to say that it came about
without it having been caused by anything, including any
moral principle, or any desire that we act according to it.
Let's say we decide to refrain from stealing because we
consider stealing wrong, but want to describe that decision as
having been uncaused. How can we possibly claim that this
decision was not, in fact, caused by our understanding that
stealing is wrong and our desire to abide by that moral
principle?
To claim that a moral decision is uncaused is to claim that it
happened completely randomly, without rhyme or reason or
cause. Such a decision can in no rational way then be
described as either a moral or a freely willed decision.
So far, we have seen that putting free will to the test of trying
to not think any thoughts, or just one thought, to the test of
having spoken unkindly to someone against our personal
moral code, and to the test of how things happen in our
physical universe all render free will impossible. But there are
more ways to see why we humans do not have a free will.
How Nature and Nurture Refute Free Will
In these following sequences we recall a teaching we all learned hack
in grade school, but don't generally consider in terms of its
implications, in order to show how our standard scientific
48
GEORGE ORTEGA
understanding of human behavior rejects the notion of free will.
Let's now see how our basic scientific understanding of why
humans and other living organisms do what we do also
renders free will impossible. Do you recall having learned in
school about a great scientific debate over whether human
behavior is the product of nature or of nurture - about
whether we humans do what we do because of our heredity
or because of our environment?
If you do, then you might also recall that the debate ended in a
draw - our human actions are usually not completely
determined by either nature or nurture, but, rather, by both
nature and nurture. But what you probably didn't learn back
then is that neither nature nor nurture alone, nor any
combination of nature and nurture, allows for a human free
will. In fact, during the decades-long course of that debate, the
completely unscientific notion of free will was never even
suggested as a possible third alternative to nature and nurture
in explaining why we do what we do.
Let's use some basic logic to fully appreciate how strongly and
clearly we reach this inescapable conclusion. Let's first explore
why our nature, or the genetic makeup we inherited from our
parents, refutes free will. We can all agree that we humans
don't get to decide which genes we're endowed with. That
decision is made for us by basic biological processes that no
one ever has any conscious control over long before we were
bom. So, if we don't determine our genetic makeup, it's easy
to understand why the behavior that results from our genes
cannot possibly be freely willed.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
49
But, as we've noted, genes are only part of the story here. The
other determinant of what we do and don't do is our
environment, or how we were nurtured, and what experiences
we've had while interacting with our world. This interaction
includes everything we've ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted
and felt.
Now our question becomes "are we truly able to freely decide
what experiences we have, and how they later determine what
we do and don't do?" For example, when we open a book and
begin reading, do we have any say at all in what, exactly, we
will read? While watching this film, is any of what you are
now seeing and hearing in any way up to you? And we can
extend this understanding to every television program and
internet video we've ever seen, and to every song we've ever
heard, and to every conversation we've ever had.
Our basic understanding - and this is in no way controversial
among biologists and psychologists - is that we, like all other
animals, interact with our environment in a variety of ways
that are in no scientific sense up to us, and that what we learn
from these interactions, working together with our genetic
makeup, is what makes us who we are, and determines what
we do. Some of you may be thinking that it's certainly up to
us whether or not we read a particular book, or watch a
particular movie, or talk with a certain person.
But what caused us to decide as we did if not our genes and
an earlier experiences? Whether in one or a few steps, we
quickly come to see that genes and experiences we neither
invited nor control influence us in a way that eventually leads
to all we do. And our heredity and past experiences prohibit
free will in a second way because they are also governed by
50
GEORGE ORTEGA
the law of cause and effect.
How Our Biological and Psychological Drives Refute Free
Will
Here we consider our basic programming from the perspective of our
biological and psychological drives, further strengthening for
audiences their understanding that factors outside of our control,
rather than a free will, are what always determine our behavior.
And our genes, hormones and other biological factors,
through the directives or programming of our basic biological
drives, work together with our psychology in another way
that prevents us from freely choosing anything.
Those of us who have ever programmed a computer
understand that what a computer does is never actually up to
the computer - it always precisely reflects what the
programmer has programmed that computer to do. While not
a perfect analogy, we can view our biological drives and
capacities as the hardware that determines what we can do,
and our psychological drives as the software that determines,
according to our programming, what we will do.
Let's explore the biological drives, or needs, we were bom
with like hunger and thirst, our need to breathe, our need to
stay warm or cool, and sleep, and our drive to make babies.
When our lives are endangered, we are biologically
programmed to try to save them. As we move into adulthood,
our genes and hormones compel us to, as best we can, find a
mate and reproduce. We also have a reason drive that compels
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
51
us to do what we find most reasonable, like pour a great
volume of water into a large glass rather than into one that
seems too small.
Most biological drives are necessary to our staying alive as
individuals, while the sex drive is necessary to our survival as
a human species.
While we can over-ride our sex drive, and decide whether to
procreate or stay celibate, and in very rare cases our hunger
and thirst drives, the same cannot be said for some of our
other drives. Eventually, for example, our drive to breathe will
overtake any desire we might have to keep holding our
breath. This drive is biologically compelled.
Alongside these biological drives, psychological drives like
our desire to seek happiness and avoid unhappiness, and our
compulsion to act according to reason, and our personal moral
code, together make up a second set of programmed
instructions that determine our every decision, and prevent us
from deciding anything freely. Freud, in fact, grounded his
well-known Pleasure Principle on this basic human drive to
seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Any time we make a decision we are relying on a mental
calculus of what we believe will either maximize our
immediate pleasure, or, over time, bring us the greatest
overall pleasure and happiness.
For example, experiments by Stanford University psychologist
Walter Mischel showed that when five-year-olds were offered
the choice between one marshmallow immediately or two
marshmallows in fifteen minutes, some of them chose to
52
GEORGE ORTEGA
endure that wait to gain what they felt would be the greater
pleasure of that second marshmallow. Others, seeing the
second one as not worth the frustration of waiting, opted for
the one marshmallow.
Although these children decided differently, they were each
compelled by the psychological drive to, as best we can, seek
pleasure and avoid pain. No decision we make ever escapes
this programmed pleasure-pain calculus.
Some may argue that although these biological and
psychological drives influence our decisions, we can freely
over-ride their influence. But does this claim stand up to the
tests of reason, science and experience?
Imagine heroically risking your life in order to spare
civilization some great calamity. A free will-believer might
argue that by deciding to risk your life, you have overridden
your biological drive to stay alive. But, what could possibly
have motivated you to override this drive to survive if not one
or more of your other biological and psychological drives,
like, for example, the drive to feel the pleasure of satisfying
your conscience, or the drive to avoid the guilt you might feel
over brushing off what your conscience is demanding that
you do?
Our decisions are also always explained by one or more
competing biological and psychological drives. We always
decide according to the stronger of these competing motives,
none of which are under our conscious control.
Some of you might think that because these drives are part of
who we are, they therefore represent our free will. But can
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
53
that position be defended? Does a compLiter decide what
hardware it is built with, or what programming will guide its
actions? Of course not. In the same way, we humans do not
get to decide whether or not we have these competing drives,
nor which among them ultimately prevails in determining our
decisions.
How Our Unconscious Mind Refutes Free Will
Nature and nurture, and our biological and psychological drives, are
not the only behavioral means we have of showing why human
decisions are not freely willed. In these following sequences, the film
clarifies for audiences why our decision-making all takes place at the
level of our unconscious mind in ways that are below our awareness
and beyond our control.
Let's now explore our unconscious mind, and see how it
prevents us from ever freely willing anything. To begin, let's
first be clear about what that more familiar part of us that we
call our conscious mind is, and what it does.
Although psychologists have advanced over twenty different
definitions of consciousness, the most generally accepted view
of our conscious mind describes it as what we know we are
aware of on a moment-by-moment basis. Our conscious mind
includes not only what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell,
but also what we think and feel. In essence, our conscious
mind is how we knowingly experience our world.
Psychologists, on the other hand, call our unconscious mind
the unconscious mind precisely because it operates below the
level of our conscious, or knowing, awareness.
54
GEORGE ORTEGA
It is very important to understand that our conscious mind,
this ever-changing stream of thoughts, images, perceptions,
impressions and feelings, is completely limited to the task of
awareness. It never actually stores any information in the form
of memories. It is our unconscious mind that serves as the
repository for all of our memories - both those that it can
readily bring into our conscious awareness, and those that we
may never ever become consciously aware of. And although
experiments in psychology reveal that our unconscious mind
is also aware of what we are consciously aware of, the reverse
cannot be said to be true because, by definition, our
unconscious mind operates below the level of our conscious
awareness.
Our conscious mind is also not an information-processing
mechanism. Because all of the data, in the form of memories,
which are indispensible to decision-making, is stored in our
unconscious mind, it is actually our unconscious mind that
processes this information, makes a decision, and then
sometimes makes us consciously aware of its decision.
In a very real sense, our unconscious mind, with its ability to
perceive, retain, parallel-process, and retrieve vast quantities
of information is our mind. Our conscious mind is simply
whatever our unconscious mind happens to be highlighting,
or bringing into conscious awareness, at any given moment.
How does this all relate to free will? Well, the concept of free
will stipulates that our conscious mind chooses our thoughts
and actions. But because our memories and our memory¬
processing mechanisms - those parts of us that are
indispensible to deciding - both reside in our unconscious
mind, our decisions must all be made by our unconscious
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
55
mind. We only ever become consciously aware of these
decisions if and when our unconscious mind decides to bring
them to our conscious awareness.
Some of you may be feeling quite bewildered by these
revelations, but they are in no way either speculative or new.
As explained in great detail by the late Harvard psychologist,
Daniel Wegner, in his classic work The Illusion of Conscious
Will L this understanding that our unconscious mind is our
deciding mind has been validated by many experiments
spanning decades in the field of psychology, particularly
within the areas of hypnosis and priming. Let's take a look at
some of this empirical evidence.
How Psychology Experiments Challenge Free Will
Having established the logic behind why decisions that occur at the
level of the unconscious can't be ascribed to a free will, these next
sequences help audiences appreciate that this conclusion has been
repeatedly verified through many experiments.
We begin with an experiment that 2002 Nobel Prize winning
psychologist, Danial Kahneman, conducted with Amos
Tversky. Essentially, they rigged a Wheel of Fortune so that it
would always land on either 10 or 65. They then asked
subjects to first spin the wheel, and then guess what percent of
African countries are members of the United Nations. They
discovered that those who landed on 10 guessed around 25
percent, while those who landed 65 guessed around 45
percent. No one, however, was aware of the anchoring effect
that the rigged numbers had on their answers.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
In a different experiment, using a technology called
transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychologist, Keise Izuma,
and his collaborators first asked their subjects about their
religious beliefs. Izuma then moved a powerful magnet near
their heads, and asked them to rate their belief in God, angels
and heaven. Remarkably, the magnet temporarily lowered the
strength of their commitment to those three beliefs by about
32 percent.
In a priming experiment, psychologist John Bargh and his
collaborators gave one group of subjects a list of words such
as Florida, Bingo, and gray that are suggestive of old age, and
then asked them to perform a sentence-unscrambling task.
Subjects in their control group were assigned the same task,
but the words they were given were neutral, not suggesting
anything in particular.
After the task, both groups were told that the experiment was
over, but it was not. As each group walked toward an elevator
to leave the building, the "old age" group was observed
walking noticeably more slowly than the control group.
In a different version of the experiment, the researchers gave
some subjects words such as patient, and courteous, and other
subjects words such as rude, and disturb. After completing the
task, the subjects were instructed to hand in their results to
someone who, unbeknownst to them, was a part of the
experiment, and whose role was to remain engaged in
conversation with another person for ten minutes.
On average, the rudeness-primed subjects interrupted the
conversation about three times more often within those ten
minutes than did the patience-primed ones. When asked why
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
57
they acted as they did, the subjects offered creative
confabulations, but showed no awareness of the words'
priming effect on their behavior.
Let's now look at a post-hypnotic suggestion experiment
where psychiatrist Albert Moll placed a subject under
hypnosis, and suggested that when he wakes up, he should
take a flowerpot from the window sill, wrap it in a cloth, put it
on the sofa, and bow to it three times.
As expected, when the subject awoke, he did just that. What's
so interesting about this experiment is that when Moll asked
him to explain why he performed those actions, his subject
gave the following response:
You know, when I woke and saw the flowerpot
there I thought that as it was rather cold. The
flower-pot had better be warmed a little, or else
the plant would die. So I wrapped it in the cloth,
and then I thought that as the sofa was near the
fire I would put the flowerpot on it; and I bowed
because I was pleased with myself for having
such a bright idea.
These kinds of anchoring, transcranial magnetic stimulation,
priming, and post-hypnotic suggestion experiments have been
successfully replicated many times. What they clearly show is
that influences we are not consciously aware of determine our
actions in ways that are completely hidden from us. They
suggest that unconscious processes, and not an alleged
conscious free will, determine and explain why we do what
we do.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
How Libet and Replications Refute Free Will
Having showed how psychology experiments refute free will, these
next sequences show that the notion can also be refuted using
neuroscientific measurements and evidence.
While decades of experimentation have provided strong
psychological evidence that free will is an illusion, over the
last thirty years the field of neuroscience has amassed a body
of physical evidence also strongly supporting the conclusion
that we humans become aware of our decisions only after our
unconscious has already made them, rendering the prospect
of a free will impossible.
In 1964, German neurologist, Hans Komhuber, used an
electroencephalogram, or EEG, and an electromyogram, or
EMG, to detect neural activity that occurred before a muscle
began to contract, and termed this neural activity "the
readiness potential."
Two decades later, American neuropsychologist, Benjamin
Libet, used Kornhuber's experimental protocol to determine
whether this readiness potential occurs before, during, or after
a person has made the conscious decision to initiate muscle
movement.
This was a truly revolutionary experiment. To the scientific
world's astonishment, Libet discovered that unconscious
processes had already initiated muscle movement about half a
second before subjects in his experiments reported their
conscious decision to move those muscles. This finding
represented solid, empirical, physiological evidence that
unconscious processes precede our conscious awareness of
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
59
OLir decisions, and that free will must be an illusion.
Some scientists were disturbed by Libet's results, and they
began to raise objections. They first claimed that because half
of a second is so brief an interval of time, Libet's results may
be flawed.
But in 2008, Dr. Chun Soon and his colleagues published the
results of replications of Libet's experiments that they had
conducted using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or
fMRI, which is a more precise imaging technology than the
EEG, and successfully predicted which of two buttons subjects
would press a full ten seconds before the action occurred.
Critics also claimed that individuals may not be able to
accurately report the exact timing of their conscious decision
to move a muscle. But in 2011, Itzhak Fried and his colleagues
published results of an experiment they conducted that tested
for this kind of error by recording the activity of single
neurons while subjects initiated muscle movement. They
found that subjects' reporting of their conscious decisions
were, indeed, quite accurate. Furthermore, through their far
more precise methodology, they found that those individual
neurons fired a full two seconds before subjects became aware
of their decision.
Critics then claimed that Libet's and subsequent replications
only tested simple muscle movements rather than the more
complex everyday decision-making that more directly relates
to the question of free will. But in 2013 Soon and his
colleagues published results of an experiment that asked
subjects to either add or subtract a set of numbers, and
reported that neural activity predicted their answers four
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GEORGE ORTEGA
seconds before the subjects were aware of arriving at those
answers.
Having soundly failed in refuting Libet's and others' findings
that our decisions are actually made by unconscious processes
before we become consciously aware of them, critics then
suggested that while unconscious processes may indeed
initiate our decisions, we may have the ability to afterwards
consciously veto our unconscious decisions. But in 2009,
Simone Kuhn and her colleague, Marcel Brass, published
results based on the understanding that subjects must
necessarily be aware of when they are cancelling a decision,
and found that such vetoing cannot be consciously, or freely,
initiated.
Over thirty years have passed since Libet first astonished the
scientific world with his discovery that our decisions are made
by unconscious processes rather than by our conscious will.
His experiments provide powerful empirical evidence that
free will is an illusion. After numerous, even more conclusive,
replications, there is now a strong consensus among today's
neuroscientists that free will is - that it must be - an illusion.
How Our Religions Refute Free Will
Many people mistakenly believe that free will is an idea that is
presented and defended in the Bible, and that it has always been
central to our zoorld's five major religions. These next very
important sequences correct such misconceptions in order to help
audiences integrate their current belief in an omnipotent,
omniscient, infallible God with the truth that God's will, and not a
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
61
human free will, makes us decide as we do.
We've seen how our personal experience, our logic and our
science all lead to the inescapable conclusion that we humans
do not have a free will. Over 80 percent of our global
population, however, believes in God or a higher power. What
have the world's most popular religious traditions had to say
about this notion of free will?
Some branches of our oldest surviving religion, Hinduism,
believe we humans do not have a free will, while others
believe that we do. Swami Vivekananda of the Vedanta school
frames the problem for free will as follows:
There cannot be any such thing as free will; the
very words are a contradiction because will is
what we know, and everything we know is
within our universe, and everything within our
universe is molded by conditions of time, space,
and causality.
If this sounds familiar, it is because Vivekananda is invoking
the scientific law of cause and effect that, as we've seen, makes
free will impossible.
The problem for personal autonomy within Buddhism is that
Buddhist philosophy soundly rejects the notion of a personal
self. Without a personal self, the idea of a person freely willing
anything becomes incoherent. While some Buddhists
acknowledge that free will is conceptually impossible, they
have adopted the pragmatic position that for us to avoid
negative Karma - or the idea that what goes around comes
around - we should act as if we have a free will.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
Considering that free will is a foundation of modern Judaism
and of its two derivative monotheistic religions, Christianity
and Islam, one might expect that the concept has been
extensively explored in the Bible. The truth, however, is the
exact opposite.
In its original Hebrew and Aramaic languages, the term free
will is nowhere to be found in the Bible. This is not to say,
however, that holding humans morally responsible is also
absent. As early as Genesis 3:16-17, Adam and Eve are
severely punished by God for having transgressed his
commandment that they not eat the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil.
While the Garden of Eden story in Genesis is taken by some to
suggest that Adam and Eve had a free will, the Bible presents
a completely opposite account in the very next book. Exodus.
We find that God prevented Pharaoh from allowing the
Hebrew people to leave Egypt, even though Pharaoh at one
point complained that he very much wanted to let them go.
Within Judaism, the notion of free will is Rabbinic, rather than
biblical, in origin. Furthermore, the Talmud, a 6,200 page
presentation and elucidation of biblical and Rabbinic
Judaism's teachings, scarcely mentions the idea. Nowhere in
that encyclopedic collection is there a convincing defense, or
even a detailed exploration, of free will. In fact. Rabbi Akiva,
who was heralded in the Talmud as the "head of all the
sages," altogether sidesteps any exploration of the concept,
offering only the self-contradictory claim that "Everything is
foreseen, yet free will is given."
Of the three major sects of Judaism that existed 2,000 years
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
63
ago when Christianity began, only the Sadducees believed we
humans have complete control over what we do. The
Pharisees, who were the dominant Jewish sect, believed that
we have a free will only when it comes to our moral decisions.
The Essenes rejected free will altogether, abiding by the
understanding that because God is omnipotent, or all-
powerful, everything that happens must happen according to
God's will.
Indeed, when we also consider God's attribute of omniscience,
or knowledge of everything, alongside his attribute of
infallibility, or inability to make a mistake, free will becomes a
logical impossibility. In other words, if God knew 1,000 years
ago all that you would think, feel, say and do today, you have
no choice but to act in exact accordance with this
foreknowledge. If you were to deviate even slightly from what
God back then knew you would do today, you would be
negating his infallibility. You would be showing God to have
been wrong. Logically, there is no way that you can today do
anything other than what God, 1,000 years ago, knew you
would do.
Interestingly, historians have found striking similarities
between the customs of the Essenes and those of early
Christians, suggesting not only that Jesus drew many of his
ideas and ideals from that Jewish sect, but that he may himself
have been an Essene before becoming the Jewish Messiah.
Perhaps that explains why John, in verse 6:44 of his Gospel,
quotes Jesus himself rejecting free will by saying "No man
can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him."
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GEORGE ORTEGA
Nowhere in the Bible is the phrase free will found or
defended, however two passages in the New Testament
explore this idea, and conclude that we humans do not have a
free will.
In his letter to the Romans, verses 7:15 through 23, the Apostle
Paul clearly, directly, and forcefully describes his personal
inability to always be good and do good as a means of
explaining his lack of a free will. He writes:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want
to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I
do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law
is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do
it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good
itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful
nature. For I have the desire to do what is good,
but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good
I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do —
this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not
want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is
sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at
work: Although I want to do good, evil is right
there with me. For in my inner being I delight in
God's law; but I see another law at work in me,
waging war against the law of my mind and
making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work
within me.
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65
A few passages later in verse 8:29, Paul expands on this
rejection of free will by describing God as foreknowing and
predestining human behavior:
For whom Fie foreknew. He also predestined to
be conformed to the image of His Son, that He
might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom He predestined, these He also
called; whom He called, these He also justified;
and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
So, while the term free will is not found in the Bible, the only
in-depth exploration of the notion argues directly and
conclusively against it. In modern day Christianity, the
Calvinist denomination continues to side with Paul in
rejecting free will.
As we saw earlier, the phrase free will was not even coined by
Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, until 380 A.D., long after the
Bible had been written. Augustine coined the term in order to
justify God's punishment of evil, not realizing that moral
reformation and the need to deter indiscretions fully justify
punishment in a way that doesn't at all require a human free
will.
In Islam, the debate about free will began in the 8th century
with the Hanbali school arguing that God has complete
control over all human actions, and the Mu'tazili school
arguing that humans freely do right and wrong. The Hanbali
position, however, seems more in line with Islam's holiest
scripture, the Quran. Verses 57:22 through 24 of that book not
only give God the credit for what we humans do, it goes on to
explain why rejecting free will is the wiser course:
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GEORGE ORTEGA
No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or
in yourselves, that was not set down in writing
before We brought it into being — that is easy for
God — so you need not grieve for what you miss
or gloat over what you gain. God does not love
the conceited, the boastful.
Review of the Free Will Refutations
Thus far the film has been building, argument by argument, the case
against free will. In the following sequences, it brings together all of
these points in order to more forcefully demonstrate how
overwhelming and incontrovertible the evidence against free will
truly is.
As we've seen, there are numerous ways to show that free will
is an illusion. However, some of us concoct what can only be
described as bizarrely illogical arguments in attempting to
defend the notion.
Before we take a look at some of these free will defenses, and
see why they fail, let's briefly review what we've covered thus
far so we can better appreciate the full weight of the evidence
they're up against.
We started out with the most basic and intuitive evidence;
simply putting our alleged free will to the test. We discovered
that we cannot freely think of nothing at all if we want or
think whatever we want whenever we want. We also cannot
be as good as we want to be anytime we want
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
67
We then saw that the basic reason we cannot do these things,
and why we do not have a free will, is because if what we do
has been caused by a chain of events that spans back in time to
before we were bom, events that were clearly not under our
control have determined our actions. If we try to challenge
this truth by claiming that what we do may be random, or
uncaused, this prospect offers no help because neither we, nor
our free will, nor anything else, can be the cause of, or freely
choose, a random and uncaused action.
We learned that nature and nurture, or our heredity and
environment, completely explain human behavior, and that
the notion of free will as a possible third mechanism for what
we do has been found to be so lacking in scientific merit that it
has never even been granted serious consideration by the
scientific community.
We learned that we are bom with certain biological and
psychological drives like survival, sex, and the drive to seek
pleasure and avoid pain, and that these drives serve as the
basic programming for everything we do in the same way a
computer's hardware and software completely determine
everything the computer does.
We also learned that because our conscious mind is limited to
simply being aware, all of the data and principles that we base
our decisions on must be stored, as memories, in our
unconscious mind. And because our conscious mind does not
have autonomous access to the contents of those memories,
it's actually our unconscious mind that makes all of our
decisions for us, and then, at times, makes us aware, or
conscious, of what it has decided.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
Finally, we learned that within our world's five major
religions, the understanding that what we humans do is not
truly up to us has a long history, and that the only biblical
exploration of this matter, undertaken by the Apostle Paul,
argued forcefully against free will.
We have looked at just a small sampling of the mountain of
experiential, logical, physical, psychological, neurological and
theological evidence that independently demonstrate that free
will is as impossible as it is for one plus one to equal three.
Accepting that Our Will is Not Free
Again the film takes into account the difficulties that viewers may be
having in confronting their lack of a free will, and offers various
consolations.
It may not be easy for some of us to come to terms with this
revelation. Some of us may be wondering, "Without a free
will, what meaning do our lives hold?" But is this pessimistic
view justified? Do any of us, for example, ever have any
control over whom we fall in love with, or even if we fall in
love? It certainly doesn't seem that way, but don't we
nevertheless greatly value, and find deep meaning, in loving
and being loved, and in being in love?
Some of us may fear that as we evolve beyond the belief in
free will, we must abandon our morality, and our rules and
laws. However, this fear is unfounded. All we have to do is
look to our world's health care system, a model that doesn't
for one moment believe people choose the psychiatric
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
69
conditions that afflict them, like autism, depression, ADHD,
schizophrenia and social anxiety, but nonetheless holds
patients who break our societal rules and laws accountable for
these acts. Because reward and punishment are powerful tools
for reforming and deterring hurtful and criminal behavior, the
psychiatric profession holds people with those conditions
pragmatically, as distinct from fundamentally, morally
responsible without needing to rely on the concept of a free
will.
Few individuals with a psychiatric condition believe that
because they didn't choose to become ill, they therefore have
carte blanche to do whatever they please, without suffering
any consequences. More to the point, our current system of
morality, founded as it is on an illusion that causes us to
blame people for what is not fundamentally up to them, is
quite immoral. As we abandon our belief in free will, we
create a system that is far more fair and just.
Some of us may fear that as our world moves beyond the
mistaken notion of free will, we will sacrifice some of our
happiness. The fear is that as we understand and accept that
everything that happens has already been predetermined, and
we lose our sense of authorship, we will also lose our sense of
novelty and wonder. But don't we thoroughly enjoy our
novels, movies and plays, sometimes over and over,
completely aware that none of what happens in them is in any
way up to us, and accepting that we don't even play a role in
the stories they tell? As we saw earlier, it is because we
humans do not have a free will, and because we are hard¬
wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, that we can feel quite
confident about maintaining the happiness we now enjoy. In
fact, because our belief in free will causes us so much
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unnecessary conflict and under-the-radar suffering, we can all
look forward to a much happier world as we leave that
harmful illusion behind.
This profound revelation that free will is an illusion, and that
nothing we humans do is ever truly up to us, may not feel so
comfortable to some of us right now. But, let's take a closer
look at the harm free will belief causes and the many ways our
personal lives will change for the better as we move beyond it.
Pre- and Post-Free Will Belief Vignettes
People's belief in free will is deeply ingrained. It is also often
cherished because many who hold it have not yet been introduced to
the great harm the belief causes. Providing audiences with another
interlude from the film's documentary format, these following
sequences detail why believing in free will creates so much
unnecessary suffering, and how overcoming the belief can enhance
their lives.
In these following before-and-after vignettes, we will see how
overcoming our belief in free will can help us deal with each
other in a far more direct, effective, and pleasant manner. The
way our belief in free will causes us problems every day falls
under four general categories; blame, guilt, arrogance and low
self-esteem.
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71
[Blame]
Let's take a look at them one by one, and see how evolving
beyond free will belief can improve our lives.
[1. Free Will: A wife discovers that her husband has been
cheating on her. They are engaged in an intense emotional
fight, with her threatening to divorce him. He counter¬
attacks by claiming that she has been cold and unloving for
far too long.]
[Post-Free Will: The couple calmly talks about what is
happening from the perspective that it is afflicting them
both. She is still upset, but not at him. He relates his
feelings without blaming her. Together, though somewhat
sadly and with some frustration, they proceed to work out
their problem.]
[2. Free Will: A man feels upset about his wife having
gained weight. He won't say anything because he basically
blames her for this, and doesn't want to hurt her feelings.
She too is upset because, although he remains silent, she
senses his discontent.]
Belief in free will causes us to blame others for what is truly
not their fault. Who, of a free will, chooses to gain weight, or
be unable to lose it? Blame all too often leads to hurt feelings.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
[Post-Free Will: Since her husband doesn't blame her, and
they both understand that she lacks a free will, they are able
to talk about her weight-gain as something that is
happening to her, and to them without the discussion
leading to shame, guilt and anger.]
Overcoming our belief in free will won't solve everything. We
will continue to become upset over some of what happens to
us. But because we don't blame each other, we avoid
unnecessary suffering, and are able to problem-solve
whatever needs our attention far more productively.
[3. Free Will: Ed, Ron and Margaret are siblings, but they
have not spoken with each other for several years. Ed
blames Ron for being too self-centered and greedy, Ron
blames Ed for not being ambitious, and Margaret blames
them both for splitting up the family.]
Free will belief leads to blame. Blame leads to hostility, and
hostility keeps people apart. Let's see how overcoming the
belief in free will changes this dynamic.
[Post-Free Will: Each one understanding that no one of a free
will ever chooses to be the kind of person they are, Ed and
Ron don't take each other's differences personally. As a
result, they are more accepting of each other, and the family
relationships stay intact.]
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
73
Ed and Ron's differences don't magically disappear, but
because they are talking with each other more often, and
without blame and hostility, they come to understand each
other, and themselves, better. They are able to negotiate their
differences as allies rather than adversaries, each feeling they
are on the same side, fighting against a challenging fate that
has led them to see things differently.
[4. Free Will: Karen and Alice are friends. Karen is late to
wherever she's going far more often than she's on time. An
hour late in meeting Alice, Alice let's her have it. Karen
retaliates by claiming that Alice is too sensitive.]
When we blame others for what is not fundamentally their
fault, they often retaliate by blaming us for what is also not
fundamentally our fault.
[Post-Free Will: Karen and Alice don't blame each other for
their failings, but they blame something. Not needing to feel
or become defensive about her lateness, Karen arrives
expressing heartfelt regret. Without a rational reason to
blame Karen, Alice is able to humorously describe why
she's angry with the universe for making her late. The two,
however, also constructively discuss how Karen might be
able to overcome her tendency to keep others waiting.]
As we come to understand that we do not have the free will to
be as considerate and on time as we would like, we become
more patient with each other. Although we are not
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GEORGE ORTEGA
fundamentally to blame for this, keeping others waiting is still
wrong. But without the blaming and hostility that often
directly result from our belief in free will, we can address this
wrong in a far more civil and constructive manner, and better
protect the relationships we care about.
[Guilt]
And when we turn this free will-based blame on ourselves, we
invite unnecessary suffering into our lives.
[1. Free Will: Jim is shown meeting with his boss, who is
complaining about his poor performance, and threatening to
let him go. Jim becomes increasingly worried, and blames
himself for his failings. As a result, he loses more and more
confidence, and becomes depressed. He won't talk to anyone
about his problem because he feels too ashamed.]
As blaming ourselves turns to shame, we become increasingly
unable to seek support in overcoming our faults.
[Post-Free Will: The meeting between Jim and his boss goes
much more productively. Jim is still concerned about being
fired, but because he doesn't blame himself, he doesn't get
depressed. He stays productive, talks with his friends and
co-workers about how to improve his performance, and
makes progress.]
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
75
By rejecting the idea of free will, we are spared the shame it
invites, and can then share our problems with those who can
help.
[2. Free Will: After a train derailment, an emergency medical
services worker is trying desperately to save someone's life.
Distracted by the chaos everywhere, he mistakenly
administers a wrong treatment, and the person dies. The
EMS worker becomes distraught, and consumed by guilt. He
quits his job, and his life spirals downward. He eventually
becomes homeless.]
Sometimes the guilt our belief in free will makes us feel can
become so damaging it can destroy our life.
[Post-Free Will: The man feels terrible about what
happened, but doesn't blame himself. He realizes that his
EMS job isn't the best fit for him. He finds a new position as
a physical therapist, and moves forward with his life.]
Freed from this irrational, destructive guilt, we become better
able to assess our options, and make whatever changes are
called for.
[3. Free Will: A woman married to an emotionally
unavailable husband falls out of love with him. She feels
extremely guilty because she feels she has failed to be a
good wife, and becomes more and more depressed.]
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GEORGE ORTEGA
Believing in free will can even make us feel guilty over the
failings of others.
[Post-Free Will: The woman doesn't blame herself for of her
lack of feelings. After working to improve the relationship
for several years, she finally accepts that she has done all she
can, and leaves her husband in order to find someone more
suitable.]
By not holding ourselves fundamentally responsible for what
is not truly under our control, we become more
compassionate toward ourselves, and this allows us to better
pursue the happiness that is our inherent right.
[4. Free Will: As a teenage boy, Carl's best friend began to
have emotional problems, and often threatened to end his
life. While Carl tried his best to help, his friend ultimately
committed suicide. For the rest of his life, Carl carried the
guilt of his not having been able to save his friend, making
it impossible for him to enjoy his own good fortune.]
Sometimes our self-blame assails us year after year. This guilt,
and the self-punishment it causes, can slowly ruin our life.
[Post-Free Will: Carl understands that his friend's suicide
was fated to happen. While still deeply saddened, by not
blaming himself for his friend's death, Carl is spared a
lifetime of guilt and self-punishment.]
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
77
Understanding that our lives and the lives of those we love
unfold according to a fate that none of us has any true control
over is not only the accurate view of our reality, it can spare us
a lifetime of misguided and painful regret.
Without believing in free will, it is logically impossible to fault
ourselves for not being as good a person as we would truly
want to be. This doesn't mean we can't change and improve.
But acknowledging our fundamental innocence opens
avenues to us that would otherwise remain closed.
[Arrogance]
Blame and guilt are not the only ways our belief in free will
harms us. When the universe makes us excel over others in
various ways, our tendency to attribute this success to our free
will leads us to become arrogant. This excessive pride not only
creates a high wall between us and others, it can also cause
others to suffer from feelings of envy and inferiority.
[1. Free Will: A men's soccer team accustomed to losing
season after season finds itself in the World Cup. At a night
club, they are boisterous and full of themselves,
disrespecting those around them.]
Knowing that our victories are not truly up to us keeps us
humble and grateful, and much more considerate of the
feelings of others.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
[Post-Free Will: The team knows that they've been very
lucky, and, as with many athletes, they are somewhat
superstitious. They appreciate that their victory has all been
a matter of luck rather than because of their collective free
will. Afraid that if they become arrogant and offensive their
lucky streak will end, they maintain their humility, and
show appropriate respect and gratitude toward those around
them.]
[2. Free Will: A man becomes financially successful, and this
changes the way he treats others. He loses respect for the
people he encounters daily, like waiters and cashiers, and
his old friends are no longer good enough for him.]
As our belief in free will leads us to become boastful and
snobbish, we tend to disrespect and demean those among us
who have been less successful.
[Post-Free Will: The man realizes how fortunate he has been,
feels a sense of noblesse oblige, and goes out of his way to
respect, and be helpful to, those less fortunate. Rather than
distance himself from his friends, he becomes a new source
of inspiration for them.]
When we understand that our gifts are just that, and nothing
we've ever truly earned, we cultivate gratitude and an
unassuming nature, and we become eager to share the fruits
of these gifts with others.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
79
[3. Free Will: An aspiring young actress lands a leading role
in a Broadway musical, and now sees herself as more special
and important than her brothers and sisters, and her parents.
She constantly makes up excuses for why she is too busy to
see them, as she devotes more and more of her time to
climbing the social ladder.]
As we attribute our fortune to ourselves, we often feel
exclusively privileged. We, at times, become more and more
competitive, leaving our loved ones behind as we strive to
climb the social ladder of mistakenly-attributed success.
[Post-Free Will: The actress feels grateful for all of the
support her parents and siblings have given her over the
years, and makes special efforts to spend time, and share her
success, with them.]
Overcoming our belief in free will helps us better understand
that enjoying, rather than constantly competing with, others is
a far wiser course for us to follow.
[4. Free Will: A man gets promoted from staff to
management of his company, and begins snubbing his
former co-workers.]
Snobbishness is one of our uglier human traits, demonstrating
an underdeveloped moral code. When our belief in free will
belief leads us to snub others, we also demean ourselves.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
[Post-Free Will: The man keeps in mind the many ways his
co-workers had been there for him over the years, and the
good times they have had as friends. Rather than becoming
arrogant, he uses his new position to advocate for various
improvements in his former co-workers' departments.]
No man is an island, and we don't get far in life without a lot
of help from others, and a lot of good luck. Seeing through the
illusion of free will helps us better understand ourselves and
others, and empathize with those who have not been as lucky.
[Low Self Esteem]
Just as free will belief causes some to mistakenly conclude that
they are fundamentally better than others, the belief can also
have the opposite effect, leading many to feel inferior and
unworthy.
[1. Free Will: A man deeply in love with a woman becomes
distraught over her breaking up with him. He blames
himself for not having been able to please her, and his
diminished self-confidence prevents him from dating other
women.]
[Post-Free Will: The man doesn't blame himself for the
breakup, and correctly concludes that they were just not
right for each other. His sense of self-worth intact, he begins
to date other women.]
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
81
[2. Free Will: A young girl with an older sister who is a
straight-A student struggles to earn Cs at school. As her
parents constantly dote on her high-achieving sister, the girl
becomes increasingly insecure. She becomes very quiet, and
fails to develop her personality.]
Free will belief encourages an unhealthy form of competition.
It often demands that someone must lose for someone else to
win. When a person is neglected by others in favor of
someone with more advanced abilities or skills, the person can
eventually come to feel that they don't measure up to anyone.
[Post-Free Will: Fully aware that the older sister has simply
been fortunate in her academic achievement, her parents
and older sister make extra efforts to support the younger
sister. They help her discover what she is good at, and help
her to always feel happy and confident.]
As we come to better understand that the losers among us are
no less deserving of respect and esteem than are the winners,
we work to ensure that we all feel valued.
[3. Free Will: A blue collar worker feels bad about not being
able to afford a big house, fancy clothes, and expensive
vacations. He feels ashamed in the presence of those who
are richer, and his wife and children also feel that sense of
inferiority.]
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GEORGE ORTEGA
Sometimes our belief in free will causes us to blame ourselves
for lacking certain qualities that the more fortunate enjoy. This
self-blame can manifest as a sense of unworthiness that also
effects the rest of our family.
[Post-Free Will: Acknowledging that he was not bom with
the qualities and circumstances that might have made him a
financial success, the man nevertheless appreciates his own
unique strengths. He accepts himself for who he is. His
family enjoys a healthy pride that is based on the qualities
they have, like being hard-working, honest, and caring.]
Just as our successes are not truly up to us, neither are our
failings and limitations. Evolving beyond our belief in free
will helps us appreciate that healthy perspective.
[4. Free Will: An elderly woman who has never married or
had children feels insecure around her more fortunate
friends. Feeling that she has been a failure in life, she feels
she doesn't measure up to them. She avoids their company,
and leads a sad, lonely life.]
Lacking a free will, no one gets to choose whom they marry,
or even whether they ever get married, and raise a family.
Free will belief causes some of us who have not been fortunate
enough to enjoy those blessings to attribute this failing to
ourselves. When we do that our self-worth suffers. As we
value ourselves less and less, some of us increasingly feel the
need to avoid those who have been more fortunate.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
83
[Post-Free Will: The woman, always having understood that
how our lives turn out is never truly up to us, does not allow
her circumstances to lower her sense of self-worth. Her high
self-regard and confidence is appealing to others, and
ensures that her life is filled with friends and joy.]
When we understand that we don't have the power to
fundamentally create the kind of life we want, we don't blame
ourselves when life takes us in unexpected directions. As we
do this, we maintain our self-esteem, and our circles of
friends.
Free Will Defenders' Positions, and the Film's Responses
So far the film has dealt with what free will is, why humans don't
have it, and why overcoming the notion matters. These next
sequences reveal the convoluted arguments and flawed reasoning
used by some academics in their attempt to salvage the notion.
Having come to understand the scientific and logical flaws in
the notion of a free will, and seen the many ways this belief
harms us, let's now look at why some academic philosophers
continue to defend the belief.
According to the last major survey, published in 2009, only 13
percent of philosophers defend free will because they believe
that the law of cause and effect does not govern the universe.
They refer to themselves as "libertarians," however, they
shouldn't be confused with the political wing with this same
name. Free Will libertarians reject causality, holding out the
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GEORGE ORTEGA
hope that in some as yet unexplained way our decision¬
making is freely willed. Some believe acausality, or quantum
mechanics, can rescue the notion. They often describe our
decisions as being probabilistic, failing to understand that
although probabilities are used to predict quantum behavior,
human decisions have causes, and it's their causal nature that
prevents them from being freely willed. Sometimes they
describe decisions as taking place randomly, however an
arbitrary decision made without any method at all is not a
freely willed decision.
A larger group of philosophers who call themselves
"compatibilists" claim to agree that our world is completely
governed by the law of cause and effect. However, they often
try to defend free will by redefining what free will and cause
and effect actually mean. Emmanuel Kant mocked
compatibilism as "a wretched subterfuge," and "petty word-
jugglery" and the father of American psychology, William
James, called it "a quagmire of evasion." For example, one
compatibilist redefinition of free will says we have it because
it is we who are deciding. So, does this mean that computers
have a free will because it is they, and not humans, that do the
calculating? This definition of free will is flawed.
Some compatibilists try to redefine causality, claiming that
somehow there is an "appropriate" other way by which cause
and effect governs people that grants them a free will, or that
we humans possess some special, unexplained, attribute that
allows us to circumvent this fundamental law of nature.
Other compatibilists correctly define free will as the ability to
have done otherwise than what we did, and so we have a free
will. They fail to realize that if the conditions surrounding our
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
85
decision were exactly the same, we would always make the
exact same choice, and could not, in fact, have chosen
otherwise.
Illusionism is a somewhat different perspective that fully
accepts that the law of cause and effect governs all human
decisions, and that free will is an illusion. Illusionists
recognize that it is, indeed, unfair to blame the poor, the fat
and criminals for choices and behavior over which they had
absolutely no choice. But they nevertheless insist that such
unfairness to these unlucky losers is more than offset by a
greater overall happiness for everyone else. They generally
also consider people far too unintelligent and immoral to be
trusted with this important truth that free will is, in fact, an
illusion.
What Free Will Defenders Fear
Having looked at how some academics misguidedly attempt to
defend free will, these next sequences reveal to audiences the
unfounded fears that have led these scholars to contrive such bizarre
defenses of the notion.
If the evidence against free will is so comprehensive and
insurmountable, and if attempts to defend the notion are so
flawed and ineffective, why do so many among the public and
within academia continue to cling to such an irrational and
harmful belief?
One reason is that free will has been a central part of our
cultural tradition for many years. Like the finally yielding.
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GEORGE ORTEGA
profoundly mistaken, belief that men are naturally superior to
women, for many generations, and from a very early age,
many of us have been culturally conditioned to accept the free
will belief.
As we have seen, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and
Islamic traditions have all challenged free will. But some
people have been unable to evolve beyond free will belief
because they fear that doing so may place them at risk of
eternal suffering after their life here on Earth is over. Some
religions preach that in order to gain entry into heaven, one
must believe what they teach, like the idea of free will. This
threat is taught to very young children. It then remains hidden
at an unconscious level far below their everyday awareness,
denying them much of their rational capacity to challenge and
overcome the myth.
Some people mistakenly fear that our abandoning the belief in
free will amounts to our doing away with morality, and
reward and punishment. They are afraid that without a belief
in free will, society could not fairly or rationally hold
accountable those who break society's rules and laws. This
fear is ironic because holding individuals fundamentally
morally responsible for what is in no way up to them, as free
will demands, is exceedingly immoral. And these people
ignore the fact that, as our modern psychiatry has so
effectively demonstrated, an unfree will-based morality is not
only more kind and intelligent, it is also more effective at
motivating positive, healthy and lawful behavior.
Some of us are unable to let go of the belief in free will
because it satisfies our egos. Some of us have done very well
in life, and maintain a free will belief-based air superiority
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
87
over the less fortunate. "I, of my own free will, made myself
so great," proclaim these achievers who are often found in
academia, business and government. What they fail to
appreciate is that overcoming the belief in free will does not
pose a great threat to their professional and social position,
which is largely based on their value to society. In fact, by
encouraging them to be less snobbish and more modest,
overcoming free will belief would probably make these highly
successful individuals far more likable to those who are less
successful.
On a deeper level, some people fear that their lives would
hold no meaning if they came to acknowledge that they don't
actually have a free will, and that all of what they do is the
inevitable result of a causal chain that regresses back to at
least the Big Bang. But are we to then conclude that great
scientists like Darwin, Freud and Einstein who have rejected
free will found no meaning in their lives? Of course not. And
are we to now wonder whether being in love should hold any
meaning for us, considering that this most cherished of all
blessings is well understood by us all to come on its own, in
no way being freely willed. Indeed, for those of us who value
truth, overcoming this harmful, nearly ubiquitous, belief in
free will would very likely usher in a new age that would hold
far more meaning for us all. In fact, just by watching this film,
you are playing a major role in bringing about this new age,
and can enjoy deep meaning from taking part in leading what
might be the greatest of all revolutions in human thinking.
Of course, many hold on to the belief in free will because they
are genuinely confused about what the term means. For
example, they confuse free will with freedom of speech and
with freedom of religion. They fail to appreciate the huge
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difference between these other kinds of freedoms and the
mistaken idea that we humans can decide and act
independently of factors and influences that lie outside of our
fundamental control.
One way to appreciate the deeper meaning and value we gain
by evolving beyond free will belief should resonate especially
well with those among us who believe in God or a higher
power. Imagine yourself going through each day doing
exactly what you want to do. This is actually how you now
see yourself and your life if you believe in free will. Now
imagine yourself overcoming this mistaken belief, and
knowing that each day you are doing exactly what God has
willed, or commanded, you to do. Under this perspective, you
become fully and strongly aware that you are manifesting
God's will with everything you do every day. Now ask
yourself, which of these two ways of seeing your daily activity
and relation to God seems more meaningful to you?
Ultimately, there is a world of meaning and joy that we can
experience in life that does not at all depend on a belief in free
will. If we find meaning in a more intelligent, compassionate,
and happy world, we will see the value of our all finally
evolving beyond free will belief.
Why Fears about Overcoming Free Will Belief are
Unfounded
Having presented the irrational fears that guide some academics to
defend free will, these next sequences show why such fears are both
counter-productive and unfounded.
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89
Because we have no choice but to want to maximize our
happiness, both as individuals and as a global society, we will
not interpret this revolutionary new awareness that we lack a
free will in any way that would deny us meaning, order, or
joy.
The fears many have about our world outgrowing free will
belief are simply unfounded. It is, in fact, because we do not
have a free will, and because we are biologically and
psychologically programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain,
and it is because we are programmed to respond to reward
and punishment, that we can rest assured that as we evolve
beyond free will belief, our rules and laws will not only
survive, they will become far more fair and effective.
Consider how we raise young children. We don't ascribe free
will to a toddler who is not yet intellectually mature enough
to morally understand what he does, yet we effectively mould
that child's behavior in positive ways through reward and
punishment.
Few of us would ever blame a person for succumbing to
anxiety or depression or to any of a host of other psychiatric
conditions, yet treatments like cognitive-behavioral therapy
are highly effective at instilling new attitudes and behaviors in
that person. Psychotherapy substantially alleviates their
psychiatric symptoms, and this happens without therapists
ever needing to invoke, or rely on, a belief in free will.
Some of us fear that without free will belief, we will lose our
desire and motivation to improve our lives and become better
people. But anyone who has ever tried to adopt a passive
attitude toward life, doing nothing more than simply waiting
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for good things to happen, very quickly learns that, free will
belief or not, when nothing is ventured, nothing is gained. As
we evolve beyond our belief in free will, we will pragmatically
maintain the understanding that because all of our actions are
effects that have causes, we must act better to become better.
The Social and Economic Impact of Our Belief in Free Will
Having shown how free will belief interferes with our personal
relations and well-being, the film now turns to how the illusion
harms our societal institutions like our religions, and our economic
and criminal justice systems.
We have seen the harm free will belief causes our personal
relationships, and how overcoming it can create more
harmonious interactions. But the harm caused by the belief,
and the benefits of moving beyond it, extend to virtually every
major institution of our global society. Our belief in free will
amplifies hateful and divisive religious attitudes, and leads to
unjust and less effective criminal justice systems. It also
perpetuates the extreme poverty that grievously afflicts over
one billion humans, as it fosters geo-political instability and
creates vast breeding grounds for terrorist organizations.
Free will belief, with the inevitable conflict it encourages, also
fuels the ever-increasing violence that is now a mainstay
across all mass media, from newspapers to books to television
shows, movies and video games.
Our belief in free will erodes the integrity of our world's
educational systems, as they tacitly condone a myth that is as
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
91
archaic and unscientific as the idea of a flat Earth.
Our free will belief provokes vengeance and revenge. It keeps
us all aggressively blaming each other, and in constant fear
that we ourselves will become targets of this pervasive
hostility. It causes self-blame and contempt, and the anxiety
and depression that follow. Our hyper-vigilant finger¬
pointing also burdens us with massive productivity and
health care-related losses each year.
Our belief in free will undermines equality, compassion,
peace, harmony and happiness at all levels of society, and
across our global institutions.
To better understand the great harm free will belief causes our
global community, let's look at the problem in greater detail,
and contrast today's world with the happier, more peaceful
and prosperous one that we can create as we evolve beyond
our belief in free will.
[Religion]
We can see some of the profound suffering free will belief has
created through our religious institutions by going back a few
thousand years to the writings of the Jewish prophet Samuel.
Voicing what he declared was God's commandment, in 1
Samuel 15:1-3, Samuel rallied the ancient Israelites to kill
every man, woman and child among the Amalekite people.
This free will belief-based blaming and horrific punishing of
entire populations has been repeated countless times
throughout history like seen in the Crusades, the Spanish
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Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials. Today, in the Middle
East, free will belief adds fuel to the blaming and counter-
blaming between religions and sects of the region, intensifying
the cruelty of ongoing atrocities.
The threat of eternal suffering in hell, almost always requiring
a belief in free will, keeps entire populations in fearful
submission to religious authority. Ironically, today, the belief
in free will has become more of a curse than a blessing for
dwindling congregations world-wide. As more and more
young people reject the threat of eternal hell that free will
justifies, they depart in droves from religious organizations
that promote the belief.
Religion actually also serves humanity in profoundly
important ways, notably as one of our few remaining
institutions that create genuine communities. And whereas
science is amoral, education often sidesteps morality, and our
world's criminal justice systems teach morals only through
punishment and the threat of punishment, religion is unique
in our world as an institution that continually strives to help
humanity understand the difference between right and
wrong.
While often far too slowly, religions do evolve. Recanting the
notion of free will would represent a major global religious
reformation that would help us better achieve our common
religious goals of unity, justice, peace, harmony and
happiness.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION 93
[Criminal Justice]
Our world's criminal justice systems are also made far less
effective and less fair by the belief in free will. Two hundred
years ago in America, there were penitentiaries that helped
convicts achieve moral penitence, and reformatories that
helped them reform their behavior. This compassionate
model, reflecting the truth that criminals turn to crime for
reasons far beyond their personal control, has since given way
to a brutally punitive model that uses free will belief to justify
vengeful wrath. Justice today is far more about exacting eye-
for-an-eye punishment than about reforming prisoners, and
keeping society safe.
Considering criminals to be evil, as the doctrine of free will
demands, makes reform efforts far more difficult, and far
more likely to fail. As police officers, attorneys, judges, news
organizations and the general public see individuals who
commit crimes as voluntarily evil, this label becomes their
self-identity. It then becomes far more difficult for these
criminals to see that just as there were powerful causes behind
why they turned to crime, there are equally powerful causes
that can help them reform, and return to society.
And when we consider how often crimes are motivated by the
free will belief-based blaming of others, and the resulting
desire to exact personal revenge on those we believe deserve
to be punished, we can appreciate the full extent of the harm
the belief causes, and the positive changes that are possible as
we evolve beyond it.
In our criminal justice system, moving beyond free will belief
will help us all better understand that while we as a society
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cannot allow unlawful activity to go unpunished, we can
certainly address the personal and societal causes that lead to
those unfortunate actions. As this happens, persons convicted
of crimes will begin to understand that although they fell prey
to a fate that was unkind not only to their victims, but to them
as well, through new intervening causes aimed at
rehabilitation and reform, they can pursue new paths toward
a much brighter future.
Although free will believers claim that retributive justice is
necessary to our criminal justice system, the evidence shows
that rehabilitation and reform are actually far more effective at
lowering the risk that released convicts will become repeat
offenders.
To a great extent, our actions are governed by how we see
ourselves. We can help criminals see themselves as not being
irredeemably evil, and in many ways quite similar to those of
us who were just luckier to have been genetically and
culturally conditioned to be law-abiding, citizens. We can help
these individuals assume a more positive self-image, and help
them adopt and express the beliefs, attitudes and actions of
good people.
By abandoning free will belief, and enlisting the help of
criminals in defeating the societal influences and other factors
that lead them to break the law, we can expect far greater
success in creating a much safer world with far less crime.
[Poverty and Terrorism]
Free will belief also causes us to treat the poor unfairly.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
95
Because we don't choose our genes or our experiences, many
of us become poor not fundamentally because of bad freely-
willed choices, but because of biological and environmental
bad luck. Those of us who succeed do so not fundamentally
because of good freely willed choices, but rather because of
our fortunate genes and upbringing.
Most of the world's rich want to act morally and
compassionately toward the world's poor, but because their
judgment is distorted by the mistaken belief that the poor
freely chose the failings that caused them to be poor, they hold
them fundamentally responsible for these failings. As a result,
the rich become far more callous and cruel toward the poor,
refusing to help them because, they claim, the poor deserve
their poverty. In this way, our belief in free will, with the
blame and indifference it encourages, destroys countless lives.
As we acknowledge that free will is an illusion, we can better
accept that global poverty arises completely from genetic and
environmental bad luck that can in no way be blamed on the
poor.
Some of us fear that as the mistaken free will-based rationale
for blaming the poor evaporates, the economic incentives that
fuel economic progress will also be endangered. However, it
is actually because we don't have a free will and are
programmed to respond positively to rewards and
punishments that we can expect our economic markets to
continue rewarding individuals for their initiative and
industry, sustaining global economic progress.
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[Mass Media]
Free will belief also whets our ever-growing appetite for more
and more violence as the media presents an unending array of
villains who, because of their freely willed evil, must be
confronted, and punished. Few of us, however, escape playing
the role of villain at times in our own lives, and the way we
treat each other in fiction often instructs and molds how we
treat each other in the real world.
Were the media to present heroes and villains acting as they
do not because of a free will, but because the hand of fate
made them act that way, we in the real world would find
ourselves treating each other with far more kindness and
understanding.
[Education]
Our educational systems are also an interesting case because
they actually present a wealth of evidence that we humans do
not have a free will. In biology, they teach that human
behavior is the product of nature and nurture, and in
psychology, they teach that our unconscious is involved in all
of our decision making. Our physics courses teach that our
everyday world is governed by the law of cause and effect,
and that the sub-atomic world is thought by some to be
governed by randomness.
But what they don't teach is that, as we've already seen,
human behavior that is determined by nature and nurture, or
with the participation of our unconscious mind, or that is
governed by the law of cause and effect, or comes about
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
97
because of Lincaused events, can in no logical or scientific
sense be considered freely willed.
While they clearly succeed in many other ways, when they
either ignore the free will issue altogether or present it as a
still-unresolved question, our educational systems fail us.
They lead students to assume that what we humans do is
really up to us when the fact is that absolutely nothing we do
is in any way truly up to us, and that is a significant failure.
[Depression and Anxiety]
The belief in free will also harms the health and well-being of
individuals in hidden ways that ultimately cost us huge sums
in lost productivity and greater health care expenditures. In
the United States, for example, antidepressants are among the
most prescribed medications, while anxiety disorders affect
almost 20 percent of the population.
Logically, it is impossible to fairly blame oneself or another for
anything without relying on the mistaken idea that we
humans have a free will. Some psychiatric theories see
depression as anger turned inward, and this anger is a form of
free will belief-based self-punishment. As today's national
economies face daunting challenges, and financial success
becomes harder to achieve, many people use their belief in
free will to blame themselves for their failure. This mistaken
self-blame erodes their self-esteem, and leads to depression
for some, and far less happiness for many more.
Free will belief also fuels our anxiety, as we fear retribution by
others for our holding them fundamentally responsible, and
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we become hyper-vigilant in defending ourselves. In America
alone, billions of dollars are spent each year on anti-anxiety
medications to treat this widespread, often free will belief-
based, fearfulness.
[Divorce]
We also cannot ignore the destructive impact of free will belief
on our marriages, as it leads us to engage in hostile, distractive
blame and counter-blame. In the U.S., about 50 percent of first
marriages end in divorce, and comparable rates are now being
seen throughout much of the rest of the world.
As we evolve beyond our belief in free will, married couples
will still face many personal disagreements. But by shifting to
the more civil, non-judgmental and effective method of
resolving conflicts that comes from rejecting free will, these
couples can expect far greater success in overcoming these
conflicts, and staying together.
[LGBT]
Homosexual, bi-sexual and transgender individuals are also
among those whose lives are made more difficult to the extent
that the public and governments view homosexual identities
and behavior as being freely willed. Because of this blaming,
LGBT individuals are sometimes denied employment
opportunities, hospital visitation rights, and the right to
marry. Understanding that gender roles are determined by
nature and nurture, and are not freely willed, can help us
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
99
better address this discrimination.
Because society as a whole is as much ruled by the desire to
maximize happiness as are the individuals who make up
society, we can expect that as our world evolves beyond free
will belief, our global institutions like religion and education
will use this knowledge to design happier, fairer and more
productive societies. Such movement toward the greater good
has been a longstanding historical trend, and we can expect
this progress to continue well into the future.
Because free will is an immoral, unfounded idea that causes so
much unnecessary suffering and conflict, our movement away
from the belief advances our most noble shared aspirations.
As we did by ending slavery and child labor, in truth we have
nothing to lose and much to gain by finally relegating the
belief in free will to the dustbin of history. As we do, we will
build a far more equal, compassionate, happy and productive
world.
Review of Major Themes
The following sequences bring together everything covered so far in
order to help audiences better appreciate the full picture of what
evolving beyond free will belief is about, and to reinforce the film's
main messages.
We've covered a lot of ground so far. We've reviewed the past
revolutions in human thinking, and discovered that both in
terms of its scientific significance and its usefulness to our
world, evolving beyond our belief in free will holds a unique
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GEORGE ORTEGA
position among them as very probably the greatest.
We've defined free will logically, scientifically, religiously and
morally in order to arrive at a very clear understanding that
the free will, or ability to have done otherwise, that St.
Augustine coined, and that Darwin, Freud and Einstein each
rejected, is an illusion.
We've explored the harm this belief causes our relationship to
ourselves and to those we love and share our lives with.
We've discovered through the test of our personal experiences
that what we think and do is not truly up to us, and we've
learned how both determinism and indeterminism, both
causality and acausality, make human free will categorically
impossible.
We've also seen how free will is nothing but an illusion in
other ways, like by understanding that it is our genetics and
environment that make us who we are, and determine what
we do.
We've reviewed a few of the many experiments in psychology
that show how decisions we ordinarily attribute to a conscious
free will are actually made by our unconscious mind. We've
seen how Benjamin Libet's pioneering 1983 neurological
experiment and more technically advanced replications
conducted since then show that unconscious brain processes
have already initiated our decision-making long before we
become conscious of those decisions.
We reviewed our religious history and traditions, and
discovered that major sects within Hinduism, Judaism,
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
101
Christianity, Buddhism and Islam have concluded that what
we humans do is in the hands of an all-powerful and all¬
knowing God.
We've seen in detail how moving from free will belief to a
causal, universal, God's will perspective helps us blame
ourselves and others less, and overcome guilt, low self esteem
and arrogance.
We've investigated attempts to defend free will, like by using
classic straw-man arguments to redefine the term, and have
understood why they fail. We've also discovered that many
modern scientists and philosophers actually side with Darwin,
Freud and Einstein in rejecting free will, when correctly
defined as the ability to have done otherwise.
We've looked at the fears some of us harbor about our world
evolving beyond free will belief, and exposed them as
misguided and unfounded.
And, we've shed light on the widespread damage free will
belief causes within our societal institutions. We've seen how
overcoming the belief can help us create a far better world.
The Benefits of a Post-Free Will World
It's important that audiences leave the theater feeling that their
evolving beyond the illusion of free will has given them much more
than it has taken from them. It's also important to assure them that
this revolutionary process will move forward at a pace that our social
institutions and personal psychologies can safely and comfortably
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GEORGE ORTEGA
accommodate to.
Now that we understand how free will belief harms not only
our personal relationships, but also our economic, criminal
justice, educational and religious institutions, corrupting
truth, morality and fairness, what can we expect as the central
message of this film filters out to all levels of our global
society?
We can be sure that our world will not suddenly undergo any
kind of dramatic and destabilizing culture shock. The
institutions that make up our global society have been
purposely designed for stability, and to protect the peace of
mind and security that this stability provides us all.
Make no mistake that the changes that will come about as our
world awakens to the realization that free will is an illusion
will positively transform our world perhaps more than any
other revolutionary change to date. However, the full measure
of this change will come about during the course of years and
decades rather than days and months.
It is one thing for our world to finally understand and
acknowledge that free will does not exist, and another thing
altogether for humanity to integrate and utilize this
transformative truth in our personal lives, and throughout our
world's institutions.
We must all first very clearly understand and appreciate that
not having a free will doesn't grant us license to do whatever
we wish, and escape some consequences if we transgress our
personal and societal morals and our laws.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
103
We must also understand that not having a free will won't
prevent us from growing as individuals, and from becoming
more successful, healthy, happy, and virtuous. And it doesn't
mean that we cannot grow as a human civilization, and
become more unified, peaceful, equal and evolved.
Actually, to the extent we do not move beyond our mistaken
and harmful belief that we have a free will, our evolution as a
civilization will be severely constrained, and perhaps
increasingly threatened, by the deeply unjust and immoral
ethical system that our belief in free will perpetuates.
This revolutionary truth about the nature of human action will
be disseminated through novels, dramatic films, TV shows,
public discussions and the Internet. It will be taught at our
colleges and universities, and eventually in our high schools,
middle schools, and elementary schools.
Abandoning the myth of free will won't be regretted because
the downsides to the belief are everywhere, and the upsides to
abandoning it are vast.
For decades the congregations of churches and synagogues
have been dwindling, as more and more members resist
religious organizations that champion the eternal punishment
in hell that free will belief promotes. By abandoning our belief
in free will, religious congregations can begin to win back the
millions of worshipers who were driven away by the untruth,
mean-spiritedness and indifference of that belief.
It would not be surprising if our world's religions were to
experience a global ecumenical reformation, rejecting the
outdated notion of a free will in favor of the accurate
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GEORGE ORTEGA
understanding that God, through a sovereign will, makes all
that happens happen, including every human thought, feeling
and action.
As our world comes to understand that free will is an illusion,
and that blaming as we know it no longer makes sense, we
can expect crimes prompted by revenge to diminish
substantially, and we can expect suicides caused by self-blame
to also become far less common.
As disagreeing couples shift from blaming of each other to the
far more civil and intelligent strategy of working together to
understand their disagreements, we can expect our global
divorce rate to decline.
And as brothers and sisters stop blaming brothers and sisters,
and friends stop blaming friends, for what is fundamentally
not under anyone's freely willed control, we can expect the
alienation and social isolation that plagues us today to
dramatically lessen, as everyone becomes far less judgmental,
and far more accepting of each other.
Our world's jails and prisons will also house fewer inmates as
criminal justice systems shift from the cruel and ineffective
free will belief-based punitive punishment model to the far
more humane and successful prevention, reform and
rehabilitation model founded on the correct and
compassionate understanding that our world's criminals are,
in the truest sense, very unfortunate individuals. Societies can
then much more effectively help them become fortunate and
law-abiding again.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
105
Throughout our global community of nations, we can expect
the rich to stop blaming the poor for being poor, and to stop
using this mistaken free will belief-based indictment as an
excuse for refusing to come to their aid. We can expect that
our world will use this post-free will belief perspective to
make great strides toward finally ending poverty on the
planet.
It may take years for us to effectively integrate this perspective
throughout our world's institutions. And it may take decades
before we can fully integrate this more correct understanding
into how we personally interact with our world, and how we
routinely negotiate our relationships. But as we together take
on this greatest of all revolutions in human thinking, not only
will we be vastly improving our present world, we will be
giving our children, grandchildren and many future
generations to come the gift of a more wonderful new world.
Finale
The film's finale again invites the audience, as individuals, to take a
leading role in moving this greatest of all revolutions in human
thinking on to its next stages. These sequences can also serve as an
important component of the film's marketing campaign.
We now understand why John Searle said that for our world
to understand and accept that free will is an illusion would
"be a bigger revolution in our thinking than Einstein, or
Copernicus, or Newton, or Galileo or Darwin," and how it
would "alter our whole conception of our relation with the
universe."
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GEORGE ORTEGA
We can see why [1 st academic] said [quote] and why [2 nd
academic] said [quote]. [Statements by leading academics
from previous sequences.]
We can now see how both causality and acausality render free
will impossible, and why all of our decisions are actually
made by our unconscious mind. We've also discovered that,
upon closer inspection, it doesn't even really appear that we
make free choices. We've seen that there is, in fact, absolutely
no evidence supporting the notion of a human free will. And
we now know that the logic and evidence that prohibits free
will is so basic and powerful that those of us without high
school and college degrees can easily understand, and take an
active role in leading, this great shift in human consciousness.
We've discovered that not only can we vastly enhance the
quality of our personal lives by overcoming our belief in free
will, we can also reform, revitalize, and enhance our global
institutions like our religions and our legal and economic
systems. In essence, we've discovered that by overcoming free
will belief, we can create a new, more wonderful, world.
And we've learned that, unlike the earlier world-changing
revolutions in thinking that were launched and led by
scientists, this greatest of all revolutions in thinking is being
led by ordinary people like you here in the audience right
now.
So, let's now spend a few minutes exploring exactly how all of
you, working alongside our world's academic, political,
religious and media institutions, can play a major role in
spreading this new awareness of the true nature of human
will throughout the entire world.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
107
First, if you now strongly and clearly understand that free will
is impossible, and why our all acknowledging this truth is a
very important matter, take it upon yourself to explain to your
family and friends and co-workers exactly why this is so. As
psychologist Howard Gardner and others have shown, there
are different kinds of intelligences like mathematical, artistic,
emotional, moral, athletic, and musical intelligence. If you
happen to be very good at thinking objectively and critically,
our world needs you to lead the way on this.
If you're a writer, help readers understand this truth through
logical explanations, and make it come to life for them
through dramatic venues like novels, movies, plays and
television series.
If you're a political activist, use this new knowledge about the
nature of our human will to help our world's leaders better
understand the need to put an end to free will belief-based
social and economic inequalities. Help them better understand
how by overcoming free will belief we can create a planet of
far more joy and far less suffering for everyone.
If you're a voter, make sure the candidates you support are
not making important political decisions based on the
mistaken and harmful belief in free will. If your
representatives in government believe in free will, meet with
them and their staff in order to help them reach a correct
understanding of the nature of human will. If elections are
approaching, pressure the candidates to state their position,
and to voice what they plan to do to help the public
understand our need to evolve beyond free will belief.
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If you're an academic, especially within the fields of
psychology, sociology, economics, political science, law,
neuroscience, physics, religion or philosophy, this issue could
not be more ripe for extensive and detailed exploration. What
changes should we make to our world's economic, legal and
religious institutions that would make them more fair and
effective? How soon can we incorporate this revolutionary
truth of free will being an illusion into the curriculums of
colleges and high schools throughout the world?
Imagine a fictional television series that depicts the everyday
lives of a community that long ago evolved beyond free will
belief, or a dramatic series that depicts a community in the
process of initiating and navigating this giant leap forward. If
you watch television, write your favorite networks, and ask
them to produce new non-fictional and fictional movies,
specials and series designed to, in entertaining ways, help us
all better understand why free will is an illusion, and how our
world knowing this truth helps us all.
And if you're religious, understand that free will belief is quite
harmful to your religion's highest ideals. Call upon your
clerics to revitalize and reform your religion's theology by
acknowledging and teaching an important truth that can bring
back to the flock many followers who over these last decades
left your congregations.
In 1514, with his publication of Commentariolus L Nicolaus
Copernicus humbled us all with his discovery that we here on
Earth are not at the center of everything. And this new
understanding of our true place within the heavens better
taught us who we are.
FREE WILL: MOVING BEYOND THE ILLUSION
109
173 years later with his 1687 publication of Principia
Mathematical Sir Isaac Newton gave our world an entirely
new, and vastly more accurate system for understanding the
nature and motion of what makes up our universe.
172 years later, with his 1859 publication of On the Origin of
Species, Charles Darwin helped us understand that we humans
did not simply emerge on Earth fully formed as we appear
today. He taught us that we, along with every other species,
all evolved from earlier life forms that had their origin about
four and a half billion years ago.
About a half century later, through a series of papers
published in the early 1900s, Albert Einstein astonished our
world by teaching us that time and space are actually one
entity, and that matter and energy are simply different
manifestations of a more fundamental reality.
Also at the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud
revealed to us that beneath the self that we are consciously
aware of lies a vastly more expansive, complex, and
fundamental part of us that is completely unconscious. With
this knowledge he gave our world a powerful new tool for
understanding who we are, why we are the way we are, and
why we do what we do.
Now, about a century later, as we watch this film, we're both
witnessing and launching an even greater revolution in
human thinking - a collective human awakening to the world¬
changing reality that all that happens happens because the
laws of nature, or God, make it happen. As we watch this film,
we're both witnessing and leading the discovery that all that
happens, and all that we humans think, feel, say and do.
110
GEORGE ORTEGA
manifests the will of the being that gave rise to the universe
that gave rise to us all.
[FADE OUT]
